Teach Me How to Breathe
by Iffy Jr
Summary: Derek/Stiles post-canon. "Naturally the supernatural hell of Beacon Hills follows Derek and Cora when they leave, so it's not long before the two youngest Hale's find themselves in bodies of the opposite gender after run-in's with witches. Cora convinces Derek to play a prank on their 'old' friends, though, and… Well, Stiles needs a friend anyway."
1. Prologue: A Whole Lot of Vodka

Author's notes: Another Sterek TW story, whoops! The story jumps between Derek and Stiles' POV's; "**OoOoOoO**" means that the perspective is changing, and "**XxX**" is just a break within that perspective. It's 69 pages/32,140 words including all of the notes, and 8 chapters including the pro and epi. It's a post-canon story, except that the darkness in Stiles is hitting him harder for reasons that will be explained in-fic. And as the summary said, Derek and Cora get turned into opposite genders and go back to Beacon Hills to play a prank on all their "old" friends, but it backfires a little. In a good way? Who knows, man.  
There's a twist, though: a lot of the story is based on quotes. If any of you have read my Avenger's story In Which Nobody is Boring Because Boring is Normal this will make total sense to you, but if you haven't then I'll do my best to explain it: the story is based off of random quotes that I've found on the internet, heard around, and…okay let's just say that I've been saving quotes and poems that I hear and like since I was in like, 7th grade, and as I'm writing this I'm now in 12th…so anyway the entire thing is one big lawsuit XD But, yes, I'll be sure to reference all the quotes at the end of each chapter! :) With it being inspired by quotes, though, all of the scenarios are written to fit around them—but there's an order and a plotline and they all flow together I swear.  
About how you'll know it's a quote I stole instead of something I wrote by myself, though is that I'll underline them all. So there will be short ones and breaks in them, and sometimes an entire paragraph could be underlined. I know it sounds messy, but it worked pretty great for that Avenger's story, so it should work for this one too :)  
Also a couple more quick clarifications: I really wish that the shower always had more specific dates because ugh. Anyway, let's say that the prologue starts in April of 2013, so all of our friends are at least 17 and it's getting closer to the end of their junior year. And I know that the sheriff said that his wife died 6 years ago at one point, but let's say that she died when Stiles was 7, so it's actually been about 10 years. For reasons. Also we must pretend that Cora says bro. For other reasons.

PS chapter titles will always have something to do with the quotes used in the chapter, so it might not have anything to do with the chapter at all. No foreshadowing for you! And each chapter has a "theme song" to it, too, which will be listed at the bottom of all these notes like I haven't already written enough whoops

PPS most of the story has a pretty sad aura to it but the epilogue is nice and happy so don't worry there's a happy ending and stuffed :)

**Chapter Theme Songs Weee  
**_Prologue_: Daughter – Medicine  
_Chapter 1_: Milo Greene – What's the Matter?  
_Chapter 2_: Daughter – Youth  
_Chapter 3_: Vita Chambers – Fix You  
_Chapter 4_: Dead By April – Promise Me  
_Chapter 5_: Muse – Undisclosed Desires  
_Chapter 6_: Goo Goo Dolls – Iris  
_Epilogue_: Oh Land – Wolf & I

ANYWAY! ENJOY! :)

* * *

**Disclaimer**: None of the characters in this story are mine. (Shame, too, because that is one damn attractive cast.)

**Summary**: Derek/Stiles post-canon. "Naturally the supernatural hell of Beacon Hills follows Derek and Cora when they leave, so it's not long before the two youngest Hale's find themselves in bodies of the opposite gender after run-in's with witches. Cora convinces Derek to play a prank on their 'old' friends, though, and… Well, Stiles needs somebody to teach him how to breathe anyway." COMPLETE.

**Pairings**: (Main) Derek/Stiles; (Other) Canon pairings, Isaac/Cora  
**Rating**: Mature  
**Additional tags/warnings**: post-canon; strong language; m/m and m/f pairings; straight smut; witches/magic; fem/gender bend!Derek, male/gender bend!Cora; hurt/comfort/romance; Depressed!Stiles (that darkness around his heart really sucks okay)

* * *

**Prologue: A Whole Lot of Vodka**

_Pick it up, pick it all up  
And start again  
You've got a second chance  
You could go home  
Escape it all  
It's just irrelevant_

_DEREK…_

Derek sighs, looking into the mirror of the hotel room he and Cora are in. Naturally the shit of Beacon Hills followed him and his sister away from it, so they were attacked by witches about a week into their road trip. They tried to shake the witches (two against six just wasn't fair), but even a month into the trip they were still hot on their heels. And to make matters worse, it was about then that said witches decided to swap Derek and Cora's genders so that Derek is now a twenty-six year old woman and Cora is a seventeen year old boy. They even smell different than usual, and Derek's tattoo is gone because he's in different skin.

It took another month after that to take the six witches down, but the two Hale's are still stuck in bodies of the opposite sex. They've found the cure for it, at least, they just have to make it. Cora is currently brewing it in the ice bucket that comes with the room out in the main part of their room.

Their opposite gender looks are…not too bad. Pretty good, actually. The only thing that's weird to Derek is that they don't look anything like he would ever picture himself as a girl. He's blonde, with hair now down to his ribs (it's naturally pretty straight except that it likes to curl up at a few places at the ends), his green eyes are now a reddish-brown, and he's about the size of Cora now (thankfully, because now he can fit in her clothes). Cora's new look is blond as well, and while she's got about the same build that Derek had (which means she gets to fit into his clothes as well; it's very nice), it looks different because she looks like the classic California beach boy that goes surfing every day and gets all of the girls during beach volleyball. Her eyes are even the classic ocean blue color… Shame she doesn't know how to surf. The only thing that takes away from it is the fact that she's growing a pretty macho looking beard/mustache combo. She may be a bit of a stick in the mud (though not near as bad as Derek himself), but she does have the need to be a teenage girl every now and again. So she's growing a beard just to say that she did. Derek's just glad that his look isn't something that he's really attracted to. He's more of a brunette kind of guy, plus he'd prefer at least B-cups… He's an A-cup. An _A_. They're not even a handful! Damn witches. At least Cora's an A so he can fit in her bras, too. But still. He somehow looks younger as a woman, too… He could actually pass as a senior in high school. Cora looks the same age that she really is, so she's not complaining about anything. But really, what can Derek do about it besides wait for the potion to be finished? You don't make apple juice when life gives you lemons, you just add a whole lot of vodka.

"Hey, bro," Cora says, appearing in the doorway. "I finished, but I didn't do it right."

Derek follows her out to the desk in their hotel room, looking into the ice bucket that's currently holding a bubbling orange goop.

"It's supposed to be purple," she says, glaring at it.

Derek mashes his lips together. "It's orange."

Cora sighs, leaning down so that her face is right above it. "If I could be an expert in just one arcane and madness-inducing field of study it would be _you_." She points at it.

Derek gives a good natured shake of his head. "Let me try it."

"I have a better idea." The grin on her face is literally terrifying. Maybe not in this form, but Derek just knows exactly what her face should look like as a girl.

Derek raises an eyebrow. "Better than showering without chest hair?"

She nods. "I want to play a prank on our old friends."

"Old? You text Isaac all day."

"Whatever, you know what I mean. I want to go back to Beacon Hills and pretend we're completely different people. We'll get Peter in on it to so he can pretend to be our dad and enroll us in high school."

Derek sighs. He really hates looking this young. "That's a terrible idea."

"So let's do it! It'd be fun!"

"Cora, your last idea of fun was singing campfire songs around the burning witches."

"Well _you're_ the one that broke out the marshmallows. You _know_ it'll be fun. Just for a few days, you know? Try and imagine the look on their faces when we tell them that it's really us."

"Why on earth would I agree to this?"

"Because you owe me."

"For _what_?"

"For your crazy ex-girlfriend trying to kill me with mistletoe!"

Derek rolls his eyes. "Leave her out of this. Peter killed her anyway."

She rolls her eyes. "Can we do this or not?"

Derek gives an aggravated sigh. "We're not going to get back to them so soon. It was a week of driving before the witches attacked us, and we've still been moving onwards in the last two months. We're going to have to take a plane down there."

She nods. "Worth it, right? It's you and me, bro! We are the future, and the future looks bleak. We might as well make a little fun out of it."

Derek huffs. "_Only_ for a couple of days? Because I'm going to seriously miss my car. Also, I want us _both_ working on the potion in the meantime."

She grins. "Deal. We'll leave tomorrow. Sit with me and help me think up new lives for us, though."

"How are we going to explain to them that we're enrolled under Peter?"

"Dude, Peter will totally go with whatever we want him to. He loves pulling shit on people. We'll just tell them that he found us and agreed to enroll us for the rest of the year so we could graduate. Everyone else is still in their junior year, but we'll be seniors. Not siblings, though. You got held back a grade and I got shoved forward one."

"That doesn't sound at all plausible."

"Derek, our friends are idiots. If they don't believe us it's not our problem. How can they ever prove that it's really us? It'll be fun."

Derek sighs, sitting down beside her. "Fine." He had fun once. It was awful.

* * *

References: Alright so here's where I reference everything so this isn't one big lawsuit, so if you don't really give a shit about where anything came from, then feel free to skip it all from hereon! For those of you who do want to know, though, I may have tweaked a couple of words here and there for each quote (though only for a very small few), and instead of writing out what it was in the story I'm going to reference the _actual_ quote. Heads up, though, but most of the stuff is from this website called . It's not going to be easy to find anything individually, but hey, it's there somewhere. The next big amount is stuff from this deviantart guy named Alpner. Anyway, to reference those guys I'm just gonna write "asofterworld" and "Alpner".  
But yeah, there are just **5** references for the prologue, so…onward:

**0.** "Pick it up, pick it all up  
And start again  
You've got a second chance  
You could go home  
Escape it all  
It's just irrelevant

**1.** _"You don't make apple juice when life gives you lemons, you just add a whole lot of vodka."_ This is totally not what the real quote is at all, I just shoved two quotes together. The part about making apple juice with lemons is from the movie Sky High, and the whole add vodka part is pretty much all over the internet.

**2.** _"If I could be an expert in just one arcane and madness-inducing field of study it would be _you_."_ Asofterworld

**3.** _"It's you and me, bro! We are the future, and the future looks bleak."_ Asofterworld

**4.** _"He had fun once. It was awful."_ Another quote that floats all over the internet. The one I've got, though, is an old man glaring grumpily on a roller coaster.


	2. 1: Just For Good Measure

**1: Just for Good Measure**

Quick note: It hurt so much trying to pick new names for Derek and Cora… I mean, I can't make it Denise and Cory because that's way too obvious. So I made them completely different because Derek learned from Jennifer that you shouldn't choose a new name too close to what it used to be, right? But yeah so I'm just telling you what their full names are going to be right now, and I honestly didn't choose them for any purpose except that I like them so there:

Derek: Erin Ares (AKA the Greek God of War) Reid  
Cora: Alec Neptune (AKA the Roman God of the Sea; this sounds really bad but just go with it) Reid

* * *

_What's the matter?  
What's the matter with you lately?  
Dreamer you will waste your time  
Do you ever wonder why  
We go on and on and on?  
Love is gone and gone and gone_

_STILES…_

Stiles sighs, staring without seeing at the screen of his laptop. He's had his English essay open for the last two hours and has written a grand totally of half a page.

Scott looks up at him with a frown, own essay done and printed and good god, is he reading Leo Tolstoy's "War and Peace" _again_? Why is Scott sophisticated now? The SAT wasn't that life-altering. "Are you okay?"

Stiles' heart hurts a little. "Yeah, I guess." He sets his laptop aside. "But I'm just gonna…" He flops over and across Scott's lap. "…cry on you for a little bit…" He mashes his face into Scott's leg. "…just for good measure."

Scott breathes a laugh and pats the top of his head. "Good thing I'm wearing sweats."

Stiles sighs, and no it does not sound kind of like a whimper. "Scott, you're my best friend, right?"

"I'm pretty sure I'm your best friend, yeah."

"Am I yours?"

"Obviously."

"Then can I can ask you something?"

"Totally."

"If you could step into my head, tell me, would you still know me?"

"Stiles, I don't need to step into your head. You always say everything you're thinking."

Stiles huffs. "Then who am I?"

Scott buzzes his lips. "Sarcastic, distracted, and not near as happy as people think you are."

Stiles rolls over in his lap. "You've noticed?"

Scott raises an eyebrow. "Dude, we've all noticed. When you live in a nightmare it's written all over your face."

Stiles frowns. "Then why isn't anybody doing anything to fix it?"

The bedroom door suddenly swings open to let Allison and Isaac walk in. "Because we don't know what's wrong," Allison says, moving straight to Scott's desk and setting up her own laptop.

"We can't tell if it's the darkness or Derek leaving," Isaac says, dropping down onto the floor with his own laptop.

Stiles rolls his eyes. He'd say that it's not Derek leaving, but… Well, werewolves know when people are lying, so if his only answer is a lie then he usually just doesn't say anything at all.

Isaac sticks out kissy lips towards Stiles' direction. "Would you care for some anti-darkness?"

Stiles huffs and rolls off of Scott and the bed into a standing position. "Your son is making fun of me again, Scott."

Scott rolls his eyes. "Just ignore him. Are you going home now?"

Stiles nods, grabbing up his backpack. "And I'm taking the long way, so don't any of you call me."

"We wouldn't anyway," Isaac says.

Stiles flips him off as he walks out, hopping into his Jeep. Yeah, so maybe he's got a thing for an asshole with a power complex, a really great face, and who's probably a thousand miles away. That's what kills Stiles the most. How far away he is. Because the "thing" he's got is a little more than a thing. Stiles doesn't remember how or when he _started_ to fall for the guy... One day he was just going through his journals (the therapist he used to have, back when his mom died, had him start them to help him cope by getting all of his feelings out of him and onto paper) and he realized that he was talking about how attractive Derek's back muscles were, how good he looked in sweatpants, and how badly he wanted to see the guy smile because he was _happy_ and not just because something went wrong for the other team. When he realizes he was in love he had stared down at the paper with wide eyes, and the very first thing that came out of his mouth was, "Shit." Pretty romantic, if you ask him. He's glad nobody heard it.

Anyway, Derek's gone now, and Stiles' entire life is breaking apart. Not just 'cause Derek left, but…just because, mostly. There was an odd number of people who got the darkness around their hearts, and the two others happen to be in love with each other. So Stiles is stuck getting through it by himself most of the time. He tried hanging out one-on-one with Peter last week, but the guy asked him what kind of porn he liked and then asked if he wanted any pizza and Stiles has _watched_ that Supernatural episode and he has never run away form somebody faster in his entire life. There's an even number of friends in their group, so Stiles _should_ be hanging out with Isaac (since everybody else is inter-dating), but the guy just follows Scott around like his son or something—hence why Stiles called him as such. Even when Scott and Allison are having sex he just chills downstairs in whatever house they're in with a movie, some food, and some homework. Seriously, who does that? The guy's a creep. Not as creepy as Peter, but still.

Stiles yanks his sweatshirt off as he gets into his Jeep, careful to make sure that none of his friends are looking out of the window. He swallows tightly, looking down at his arms as he closes the door. Of course he finally broke and did something to himself… He thinks that Aiden has noticed them before, but being that he's kind of an asshole he didn't even say anything about them. He's given subtle hints, though… "If any of us is in danger it's probably Stiles," when they're going out after some weird monster, for example. But then Stiles gets to make some offhanded comment about how Aiden is only saying that because he's human, or his favorite: _The closer we are to danger, the farther we are from harm_. His only regret is that he's going to have to wear long sleeves in the summer.

He's about halfway home when he's hit with an onslaught of "wow I really have to pee", and he's glad that he took the long way so he can just pull over on the side of the road and venture a few yards into the forest beside the road in the first place. He locks his car incase some random car prowler shows up (it's happened before and he's not going to let it happen again) before trekking in, making sure that there are also no hunters or other supernatural creatures around who could kill him or just scare him so bad that he pees on someone's pant leg or something.

When he comes back he checks for cars coming any directions, and he hears a motorcycle coming off in one, but that's far enough away that he's got plenty of time to walk around the back of his Jeep and get into—

He stops, frowning down at his door handle. He pulls again, and the door doesn't budge.

"Oh _fuck_," he says, looking into his window. And yeah, there's his phone on the passenger seat and the key still sitting in the ignition even though the car is turned off—at _least_ the car is turned off. If he's going to lock his keys into the car he's going to hope he's not wasting any gas while doing it.

He sighs, leaning his forehead against the window. Of _course_ he told his friends specifically not to call him, too. _Yeah_, he thinks. _Don't call me. I don't want you to call me. Just come FIND me_! That motorcycle is about to go by and he's not even going to stop. Stiles could really use a cell phone, at the very least, and that way Scott could come grab him to… He trails off when he realizes that the motorcycle _is_ stopping. Praise the gods and hallelujah!

Stiles plasters on a huge smile, swinging around to the front of his Jeep and waiting to talk until the bike has been turned off. "Aw, man, am I glad to see you," he says, leaning against the front of his Jeep. "I totally just locked _everything_ into my car. So if you're some guy who's gonna mug me, I literally have nothing but the clothes on my back right now. Then again, if you're some creepy serial killer-rapist, well hey, I'm perfect for yuh."

Stiles is probably about to say more, but he slams his mouth shut tight when the motorcyclist has swung off and is now taking their helmet off to reveal a woman. And not just _a_ woman, either. A drop dead gorgeous woman that totally looks Stiles' age. She's got blonde hair that tumbles out of her helmet and down to her chest, reddish-brown eyes that Stiles totally wishes he had instead of _just_ brown, and so many curves that Stiles has to keep his mouth shut so nobody sees it watering.

"Great first impression, kid," she says, holding her helmet down by her legs. "You look like you could use a lift."

"Uh…" He tries to get his mouth working and, praise the other gods, he doesn't even stutter again: "No, just make a couple of calls to see if my friends can grab me up. I just left from them and told them not to bother me, so I'm kinda stuck here."

Stiles watches closer as she nods and pulls out her fancy shmancy looking iPhone, the case a simple black. Derek had it the same way because he's never been partial to colors. Stiles either expected a weird look at his first words or at least a smile after he told her he's stuck here, but all she does is nod and pull out her phone. It _would_ be Stiles' luck to meet a drop-dead gorgeous blonde in the middle of nowhere that's got the emotional range of a number two pencil. She's like Derek's long, lost, fraternal twin or something—which is just fucking great since Stiles happens to be in love with the guy. Obviously he's not gonna instantly go off and ask this chick out on a date, but Derek's gone, so he may as well stare at her legs a little bit.

This girl raises an eyebrow at him, and Stiles realizes that she's been holding her phone out for a few seconds. "What are you staring at?" she asks as she practically shoves a strand of hair behind her ear. "Do you want the phone or not?"

Stiles nods awkwardly, grabbing it up—and then he's speaking before he thinks, which is pretty much normal (just like Scott said; that guy knows him so well): "I do not believe in love at first sight. But god damn."

She lowers the eyebrow to blink a bit. "Just make your calls."

Stiles cringes, mostly at himself. "Sorry," he says, dialing Scott's number. "My filter broke when I was twelve." He turns around so he doesn't have to watch her roll her eyes or something. Scott's phone just keeps ringing and ringing, though, so he sighs and pulls back to dial Allison. Same thing. Isaac? "Damn," he whispers, hanging up as well. He turns around, holding the phone out. "Thanks, but it looks like I'm walkin'."

She gives him a dark, scrutinizing look for what seems like ages before her shoulders slump a little. "Where yuh goin'? I could give you a ride for at least a little while. It'd be better than walking the whole way."

Stiles blinks a bit. "You mean, even after—"

"Yeah, don't mention that. Do you want a ride or not?"

Stiles gives a fervent nod. "Yeah, totally." He walks over to the bike. "You can wear your helmet, obviously. I mean, I'm probably gonna hold onto you super tight, though, so I apologize in advance. It's been…" He trails off, eyes widening a little. "Oh, wow. This is really nice." Stiles squats down beside the bike, looking all of it over. It's one of those awesome sapphire blues that don't need too much washing but you can also see in the sun (unlike silver), and Stiles knows for a fact that they're only coming in black right now, which means the paint job is custom. He's not sure why anyone would get something custom and then just do a solid color, but to each their own. "Is this yours and can you tell me everything I want to know?" he asks.

The chick is definitely smirking. "What do you want to know?"

Stiles grins up at her. "Your name, for starters."

"The starter's electric," she says, squatting down beside him. Stiles definitely does not look her over (yes he does; tight leather jacket over a shiny red tank-top, tight blue jeans, and a pair of tight, lace-up combat boots that go about mid-calf. Her entire aura literally _screams_ "biker-chick". Stiles is glad that he doesn't believe in love at first sight or he'd be in deep shit. "And the name's Erin."

Stiles grins. "I'm Stiles."

She nods, but there's no smile. "Anything else?"

He turns his grin to the bike. "Basics, for beginners."

She nods. "It's a 2013 Suzuki SFV650, and the engine's a six-forty-five c-c, four-stroke, two-cylinder, liquid-cooled, DOHC, ninety-degree V-twin."

Stiles blinks a whole hell of a lot. "You made that sound really fucking awesome. I rode a motorcycle, like, three years ago, and I think it was just some dinky thing one-up from a dirt bike. I used to ride those more often, too, but…" He shrugs. "Well, my life's been pretty busy these last couple years."

He definitely notices the weird shine that passes through Erin's eyes. "Think you remember enough to drive this one?"

Stiles' jaw drops. "No way," he says. "You wouldn't do that."

She stands, smirking. "Wanna bet?"

Stiles stands up so fast that he gets a little light-headed, but that doesn't stop him. "I totally want to," he says, "but I totally don't want to get us killed."

She shrugs. "What's life without a little death every now and again?"

Stiles knows that it's just supposed to be a joke and that she's probably never had to go through a death before, so he tries really, really hard not to let his shoulders slump at all. Considering that he's survived off pretending that everything is always fine, it's not very hard.

Erin gives him a super speedy crash-course in how to drive the bike that Stiles misses half of as he swings on, kicking the stand up and just holding it up. He grins back at Erin as she's putting her helmet on, and with a wider grin he turns it on.

"Hold on tight," he says. He knows that his heart is hammering against his chest, but maybe she won't notice if he doesn't say anything about it.

Stiles loves driving his Jeep with all four windows all the way down, but driving with no walls at all is definitely something he could get used to.

Stiles sees Erin reach up in his peripheral vision and flick up the visor of her helmet. Stiles didn't even know it was a visor. "Slow down some!" she yells.

Stiles frowns, glancing down to see that he's driving at eighty on this twisting back roads. How safe of him. "CAN'T STOP!" he yells.

"Stiles, slow _down_!"

"WON'T STOP!"

"Stiles, I swear to god, if you wreck my bike…!"

"NOT SURE HOW TO STOP!" Maybe he should have paid attention to how exactly the breaks work.

Erin snarls a little—a very werewolf-like snarl, wow—before snapping directions for Stiles to slow down until they're pulled over and safe on the side of the road. "That was a terrible idea," she mutters.

"The worst of the worst," Stiles says, grinning wildly at her, "but the most fun I've had in months." He kind of feels like an asshole, but…well, no regrets. She's a stranger anyway.

Erin's reaction is to give a confused look, though. "Really?"

Stiles grins wider. "Yeah, life kind of sucks around here." Aaand now the subject change: "Nice snarl, by the way. Are you a werewolf?"

Erin gives a taken aback look. "You could tell from my _snarl_?"

Subject change successful. "Dude, I've been branded by all the supernatural shit that comes here as 'the boy who runs with wolves'. I know what I'm talking about."

She smiles a tiny little smile that reminds Stiles painfully of Derek. "There are werewolves around here besides Peter?"

Stiles frowns. "You know Peter?"

She nods. "My little brother and I just came out here for an unknown amount of time. We ran into him a couple days ago while looking for a place to stay and he said he had a really big place we could share with. He used to share it with his niece and nephew or something."

Stiles gives him a sad smile. "Yeah, I knew them both. They left after some hardcore shit a couple of months ago." Subject change number two in effect: "Anyway, yeah, there are tons of other werewolves around! Well…" He frowns. "Four of them. So not tons."

Erin shrugs. "It's more than I've ever seen in one place."

Stiles grins. "I'm sorry about being totally, recklessly stupid on your bike, but if you drive me home without getting us killed like I would have I can make sure you meet all of them."

Erin gives another of those small smiles. "That sounds like fun."

**XxX**

Stiles grins at Scott as he walks up the front steps of the school with Allison, both of their eyebrows raised.

"What's got into you?" Scott says, moving passed him.

Stiles grins wider. "I got a girls number."

Their eyes widen. "No way," Allison says.

He nods. "Her name is Erin. I didn't get her age, but she looks like a high schooler. She let me drive her motorcycle."

Scott's jaw drops. "No way!" he repeats, louder.

Stiles laughs. "Yeah, but get this: she and her little brother are _werewolves_ and are staying with Peter at Derek and Cora's old place! Pretty cool, huh?"

Isaac and Aiden pop up at that, their eyes wide as well. "More werewolves?" Aiden says. "More girls?"

Isaac grins. "A girl _and_ a boy?"

"Back off, you two," Allison says, rolling her eyes. Everybody knows that Isaac is pansexual. He didn't even have to come out, they just _knew_ it. "The girl, Erin, belongs to Stiles." She glances back at Isaac. "You might be able to hit on her brother, though."

"I don't know his name yet, though," Stiles says. "I'm supposed to call Erin after I get out of school to—"

"To what?"

Stiles whips around, grinning widely at the voice he recognizes as Erin's. She's with a taller kid with sandy blonde hair, beach tanned skin, ocean blue eyes, and some scruffy blonde stubble. Erin is in simpler clothes today, less showy: boot cut jeans that are frayed at the heels, ratty looking black and white Converse, and a baggy red sweatshirt that's zipped halfway up to cover what looks like a black v-neck, but who knows since it's mostly covered.

"No way!" he says. It's a common phrase amongst him and his friends. "You guys are going here now?"

"For a while," Erin says, eyes darting around at whom of Stiles' friends have so far accumulated. They're still in need of Lydia, Danny, and Ethan. "Are these those friends you told me about?"

"Some of them," Stiles says, looking back at them and realizing that Ethan and Danny have shown up in silence. "We're just missing one. Guys, this is Erin and her brother." He looks back at them. "Whose name I don't know yet."

The blonde gives a very dazzling smile—actually, he gives _Isaac_ the dazzling smile. "Alec," he says. "Alec Reid."

Isaac gives one of his half smiles back.

Stiles wishes getting together with someone was that easy for him, too. Then again, Isaac is totally the type of person who would get together with someone with the single bat of an eyelash, or something like "hey, wanna make out?" "yeah, sure" and boom they're in love.

"Yeah," he says to his friends. "Erin and Alec Reid. And these are _my_ friends, Scott the alpha, his human girlfriend Allison, his beta Isaac, his alpha-beta twins Aiden and Ethan, Ethan's human boyfriend Danny, and Lydia the banshee is…somewhere around here."

Alec tilts his head a little bit, giving Scott a hard look. "You don't smell like death. Are you a true alpha?"

Scott gives a proud little grin. "Yup, that's me!"

"Impressive," Erin says, inspecting her fingernails. They're perfect, painted black. "So, you all know Peter?"

Danny snorts. "_You_ know Peter?"

Stiles quick repeats the information he gave to the others.

"Damn," Ethan says, eyes widening a little. "You guys have to _live_ with that guy?"

Alec frowns. "He didn't seem that bad when we met him."

"Well, he is," Allison says, rolling her eyes. "He's killed more people than I can count on ten fingers, and that includes his own niece—not the one that used to live with him, but their oldest sister. He's cold-hearted, ruthless, and you shouldn't trust him. So…watch your back."

Erin gives Alec a dark look. "I _told_ you."

Alec rolls his eyes. "Excuse me for falling for the hot dad look."

Erin gags a little bit. "Please don't do that."

Alec shrugs. "I will do what I want."

Isaac steps forward at that, hand extended. "Hi," he says.

Alec gives the classic, shimmering-toothed beach boy smile. "Hi yourself."

Stiles gives them a disgusted look. "Anyway," he says to Erin, "what class do you have first?"

"English," she says. "And then we're taking French. We had it last year, too, and it was hard, but we just know that we're glad we don't have to learn _English_ as a second language—not that it doesn't borrow a lot from other languages, like Latin and Greek for its roots."

Scott snorts. "English doesn't borrow from other languages. English follows other languages down dark alleys, knocks them over and goes through their pockets for loose grammar."

Erin actually smiles at that. A full fledged smile that thins her lips and shows her teeth. "That's pretty funny," she says. "What grade are all of you guys in?"

"We're all juniors," he says. "Only Allison is eighteen. What about you two?"

"We're both seniors," Erin says, "and we have all the same classes."

"I've got English first period, too," Danny says with a smile, pulling Ethan forward to step in front of her. "Are you two twins?"

She shakes her head. "He skipped kindergarten, back before all of our moving around."

"That must have been fun," Lydia says, coming out of nowhere. "I probably could have skipped up to third, though, if I hadn't of had such a big crush on an asshole." She gives one of those bitchy _who the fuck are you_ smiles. "Hi, Lydia Martin, top student of the school. Are you new here?"

Stiles huffs, grabbing Lydia's hand and pulling her back a little. Ever since the whole alpha pack/sacrificing shit started, Lydia's actually been showing everybody exactly how smart she is, and it's kind of made her a bitch. She knew she was better than everybody before, but it was nice when she didn't flaunt it. Well, she did, but not this bad. And usually it's not even _this_ bad. She's probably on her period. Stiles knows that it's totally a dick move to always think that, but he's known her long enough to know what type of mood she's in when she _is_ on it. "Don't be rude," he mutters. "Erin and Alec are werewolves, too."

"Great," she snaps, shifting her bag on her shoulder. "More fur to clean out of my pool." She stomps off, heels clicking loudly against the tile and skirt swooshing in her wake.

Stiles sighs, looking over at Aiden since they're an official couple now. "Is she—"

"Yeah," he says right away. "We haven't had sex in three _days_. The animals living in the walls of my house have way more sex than I do!"

"Oh _no_," Stiles says sarcastically. "Three days. Talk to me about it when you've gone through a seventeen year virginity."

Aiden snorts, shoving at his shoulder. "You virgins are adorable," he says, starting to walk after Lydia.

"Not when we can be sacrificed!" Stiles yells after him. He huffs when Aiden ignores him, looking back at Erin. "Sorry," he says. "I figured you could smell it anyway."

She nods. "I could, and I've got you beat."

Stiles manages to snap his hanging jaw shut after only two seconds! "Wait, what?"

"Yup," she says. "Nineteen years."

"And three months," Alec says, darting it out of his conversation with Isaac.

Cora rolls her eyes as she puts equal wait on semi-spread legs and crosses her arms, and Stiles is hit with such a strong wave of _Derek_ that he actually has to take a step back. "Yeah, I got held back in ninth grade, so sue me."

"Don't worry," Danny says. "We know that education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught."

Erin gives that same little smile from yesterday. "Thanks."

"You said you moved a lot?" Allison asks.

Erin nods.

"I did the same thing. People always asked if I got pregnant. Fun stuff."

Erin nods, averting her eyes.

The bell rings at that point, so everyone awkwardly steps away from people to get to first period classes.

"You should find us at lunch," Stiles says to Erin. "We usually sit by the big wall of windows in there."

"Alright," Erin says. "Any good food?"

Stiles shrugs. "The milkshakes are pretty good."

Erin gives a look that's almost amused. "I meant actual food, but thanks."

Stiles grins, backing away to go his own direction. "Anytime."

**OoOoOoO**

_DEREK…_

By the time that Derek and Cora get out of their calculus class (seriously, who makes new students clean off the whiteboard? Derek forgot how much he hated high school) and into the cafeteria to get food (Alec convinces him to actually get a milkshake, just to mess with Stiles some more) and then over to the table with their old friends (or "new" friends, as far as they know; Derek knows why Peter agreed to tormenting people, but he still can't believe that _he_ did), _all_ of them are already there.

Derek sits down beside Danny, and Cora sits on his other side to sit beside Isaac. As he do, Stiles' eyes widen and he gasps. Derek expects him to be all excited that he actually got a milkshake, but instead his reaction is…not that.

"MY MILKSHAKES!" he yells. "THE BOYS!" He throws his arms up. "THEY'RE COMING!"

Everyone else completely ignores Stiles, including Cora, so Derek just blinks at him a couple of times before looking down at his food to start eating. It's nice to know that nobody has changed in the last few months. Stiles was always the one that kept everyone grounded, which is funny since he's always got his head in the clouds. But seriously, hitting on him when he was going to be picked up as a strange hitchhiker? If Derek had actually been a stranger he would have got back on his bike and drove away.

Stiles grins at his reaction, shoveling a bite of mashed potatoes into his mouth. What, he's proud of himself for not scaring Derek away? If only he knew why he really wasn't running, he'd probably try to punch Derek in the face.

"Anyway," Scott says, setting an apple onto Stiles' tray. Derek remembers that Scott doesn't like apples, but then why would he get it in the first place? Just so Stiles can have a second? "How was your guys' first day of school?" he asks. "I mean, if this was your first day. I haven't seen you around at all."

"It is," Cora says, turning away from Isaac. Derek can just barely see the way that Isaac has his hand on Cora's knee from here. So much for thinking they like each other because they text all the time—that or Isaac really does like Cora and he's just trying to get over her. He's a weird kid when you get down to his core. Then again, he's also the sweetest thing Derek has ever met. It's confusing.

"Are you guys doing anything around here, then?" Allison asks. "Work wise?"

"Not yet," Derek says. He says yet, but they're not really planning on it at all. They'll be on their way pretty soon. Thankfully that doesn't come up in lies, plus the fact that Derek has perfected the art of lying so that Cora can't even tell sometimes. It's handy. "We might later, but we're not sure. Do you guys do anything?"

"I'm an assistant veterinarian," Scott says. "My mom's a nurse, so I'm following a bit in her footsteps."

"My dad and I sell weapons to the government," Allison pipes up. "My family's been doing it for generations."

"I work under the schools counselor," Stiles says with a smile. "I wanted to be a cop for a while since my dad is, but I decided I'd follow in my mom's footsteps instead."

"My family owns a chain of businesses, so I'll always be rich," Lydia says haughtily. Derek never liked her much in the first place, but she's definitely gotten worse since he and Cora left. He knows that Cora liked her quite a bit, but he never knew why. Maybe just having another girl around, and she couldn't go hang out with Allison because she was always with Scott or just trying to kill something…

"Ethan and I just started work at the local car shop," Danny says. "Ethan usually works the front counter, though."

"I'm working the cemetery again," Isaac mutters. "I hate that place."

"You got claws from that experience," Aiden says. "It's not so bad."

Isaac raises an eyebrow. "I also found my dads bloodied body from kanima-Jackson, watched a girl who rescued me die, saw one of my best friends lifeless bodies, watched two other friends waste away in front of me without the light of the full moon—"

"Alright, alright," Scott says. "You think your life sucks, we get it. At least you _had_ those friends, and now you've still got us, so…" He shrugs. "Take your pick."

He huffs. "Fine, so I like how it turned out. It just could have turned out better."

"Amen," Stiles says quietly, raising his bottle of water.

There's a few seconds awkward silence after that, but Aiden breaks it:

"And _I_ work as a test driver for motorcycles," he says, grinning. "The owner is a human, but he knows all about the supernatural, so he doesn't scream when I break a couple of bones and it just fixes itself right back up. Almost lost my whole left leg about a month ago. That was fun."

Derek snorts. He had no idea how strange all of his friends really are. Most of them sound okay, but to a true outsider… An alpha that spends his time fixing things, his girlfriend bonding with her dad by selling guns to the high and mighty, a kid who just yelled about boys coming for milkshakes (that song is so stupid) that wants to become a psychologist, two of the least stereotypical gays in the entire world, and the straight twin that talks about how much fun it was to almost lose an appendage.

Derek shouldn't have left. This is great.

"I'm hardly ever _at_ work, though," Scott says with a huff. "I'm always out trying to get rid of all the shit that the darkness has brought here. I mean…" He shrugs. "Well, it's not important. Stiles, Allison, and I all had to die so we could save our parents from being sacrificed by our now dead Darach substitute chemistry teacher. It's a long story."

Yeah, Derek is definitely glad he's not an outsider.

"I love work," Stiles says, stretching his arms up. "It fascinates me. I sit and look at it for hours."

Derek blinks a bit. "Was that a joke?"

Stiles and Danny laugh, high fiving each other. "Yeah," he says. "I meant, like, just staring at it not get done, but I actually just stare and read a lot. Marin makes me read a _ton_ of shit." He shrugs. "It's pretty fun, though. I just wish I could reverse it on myself sometimes, you know what I'm sayin'?"

"_Oh_ yeah," Ethan says. "You need it, dude."

Stiles rolls his eyes. "All of you are so mean to me."

"It's like I said, dude," Scott says. "When you—"

"I knoooow," Stiles says, rolling his eyes. "I get it, I know what you're going to say, yes, thank you, I got it, the whole fucking fruit salad, thanks."

Danny grins. "Knowledge is to know a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is to not put it on your fruit salad."

Stiles rolls his eyes again. "Excuse me for forgetting my wisdom at the salad bar."

Derek snorts, and he's pretty sure that some teeth show in the split second smile that comes with it. He knows that he smiled earlier at Scott's English joke; it felt nice. It's been a long time since he's smiled, considering that he and Cora have been running from witches for the last two months. As their opposite genders. It wasn't easy, but at least Derek has already gone through his first period. Thankfully he grew up with mostly girls so that he already knew most of the basics—but _damn_, those things _hurt_.

Cora frowns, looking away from Isaac. "Huh?"

"It's a joke," Stiles says. "Don't think too hard about it, surfer hunk. Go back to your new boyfriend."

Cora rolls her eyes, and Derek can tell that she's resisting the urge to punch him somewhere. "I am slow, and sometimes men around me laugh about it, but I'm growing a beard and it makes me happy. I don't think I've seen you with a true, beautiful happiness at all since I've seen you, so you can shut your mouth."

Derek winces a little bit, as do the others, and Stiles leans back from where he's leaning against the table. That was probably a little bit worse than any punch she could have thrown.

"Nice going, Stiles," Lydia says with that annoying, bitchy, dainty eye roll she likes to give. "Now we've _both_ insulted our new friends."

Stiles glares at her. "At least mine was _supposed_ to be funny."

"Anyway!" Derek says loudly, deciding it's a good time to change the subject. "You can all hash out at each other some other time, how about? If Lydia's the highest in the grade, who's the second? Any of you people?"

"I am, actually," Scott says. "Well, Danny and I switch around in second and third a lot, but it's not really a huge deal."

"I'd rather be switching around with first and second," Danny says with a little shrug, "but second best isn't so bad."

"Well, you know what they say," Lydia says to Danny in the fondest voice and facial expression that Derek is pretty sure he's _ever_ seen on her. "If at first you don't succeed, _run_."

"This isn't Doctor Who," Aiden says with an eye roll.

Lydia snorts. "You have no right to talk to me about that when you've only seen the first episode of Nine, you uncultured swine."

Derek finds that he's smiling the tiniest bit. _That's_ the Lydia he remembers. Not much better, but at least it's what he's used to. He's glad he came back, at least for these couple days. Cora was right. He missed his friends.

* * *

References: There are some references in here that I don't know where they're from even after I looked for sources, sooo those are just going to have "Unknown" after them. If you know where something is from and I don't, though, feel free to tell me! There are **15** references in this chapter:

**0.** "What's the matter?  
What's the matter with you lately?  
Dreamer you will waste your time  
Do you ever wonder why  
We go on and on and on?  
Love is gone and gone and gone." What's the Matter by Milo Greene (song).

**1.** "Are you okay?"  
"Yeah, I guess. But I'm just gonna…cry on you for a little bit…just for good measure." Unknown

**2.** "If you could step into my head, tell me, would you still know me?" If You Could Step Into My Head by Swallowing Pride (song).

**3.** "When you live in a nightmare it's written all over your face." I Am the Killer by Thursday (song).

**4.** "The closer we are to danger, the farther we are from harm." Lord of the Rings: Two Towers by JRR Tolkien (book).

**5.** "I do not believe in love at first sight. But god damn." Asofterworld

**6.** "CAN'T STOP! WON'T STOP! NOT SURE HOW TO STOP!" Asofterworld.

**7.** "English doesn't borrow from other languages. English follows other languages down dark alleys, knocks them over and goes through their pockets for loose grammar." James Nicoll.

**8.** "The animals living in the walls of my house have way more sex than I do!" Asofterworld.

**9.** "Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught." Oscar Wilde.

**10.** "THE MILKSHAKES! THE BOYS! THEY'RE COMING!" I don't have a specific link/whatever to it, but obviously it's inspired from "my milkshakes bring all the boys to the yard" or whatever the song is (I've never heard it whoops). Anyway it's Mansley, from the Iron Giant, with him raving in a few stills while eating that milkshake with Hogarth. Somebody just edited and made it funnier, so I stole it :P

**11.** "I love work. It fascinates me. I sit and look at it for hours." Alpner.

**12.** "I am slow, and sometimes men on the bus laugh about it. But I grew a beard and it makes me so happy. I don't think I ever seen them happy." Asofterworld. These weren't the exact words that I used, of course, but I mixed it up a bit so it would fit better. Obviously there are no men on buses around, and they've each got a motorcycle, so they don't need the bus at all.

**13.** "Second best isn't so bad." Asofterworld.

**14.** "If at first you don't succeed, run." Asofterworld.


	3. 2: Before You Remember

**2: Before You Remember**

_And if you're still breathing, you're the lucky ones  
'Cause most of us are breathing through corrupted lungs  
Setting fire to our insides for fun  
Collecting names of the lovers that went wrong_

_STILES…_

Stiles' eyes snap open in the dark, staring up at the glow in the dark stars he stuck onto his ceiling when he was in fourth grade. For a second he doesn't remember anything at all about his life. He's just a fourth grade, stacking a stool onto his bed to try and reach the ceiling before his dad comes in and tells him how dangerous that is and to just let him do it.

But then it snaps in that his mom probably would have helped him to if she hadn't of died when he was seven, back in second grade, before he even knew who Lydia _was_ to have a crush on her. Waking up is nice, for those first few moments, before you remember who and what you are. And Stiles is just a sad, broken teenager with really great friends that just can't seem to help him even when they try to.

Stiles sighs, reaching his hands up to rub his eyes after a dreamless sleep. Sometimes he wishes he had dreams, just to escape for a while. Because really, is there no way out of the mind? Even in a dreamless sleep it takes up time, but it's over in a flash, like it never even happened. And the fact that it's currently only three in the morning and he doesn't have to get up for another four hours is not exactly helping.

Stiles is about to roll over and at least try to go back to sleep, but instead he frowns, realizing that his phone just beeped. He rolls back over to grab it off of his nightstand, eyes widening when he sees that he's got three missed calls from…Erin? Also one text message:

**I know you just woke up. Are you going to return my calls or what?**

Stiles frowns deeper, looking over at his window as he calls up Erin's number.

"Hey," she says.

"No, I won't return your phone calls," Stiles says right away. "I like them and I want to keep them."

Erin snorts. "Glad to hear it. Are you going to go back to sleep?"

"I was going to try to, but I know I'd just lie there forever. What's up? Is something wrong?"

"No, but I wanted to talk to you."

Stiles frowns. "About _what_?"

"That darkness thing that Scott mentioned."

Stiles sighs. "You couldn't ask me at school tomorrow?"

"I don't want anybody else to explain it. They make it all confusing."

"Alright, alright. Are you outside of my window or something?"

There's a tap on the glass at that, so Stiles hangs up and swings out of bed to go and open it. It's only after Erin is hopping in that he realizes he's just in boxers.

"Whoops," he says, jumping back into bed. "I guess I forgot that some people aren't used to my body."

Erin cocks an eyebrow, sitting down in Stiles' desk chair. She's still in the same clothes she had on at school, but now she's ditched the sweatshirt to reveal a To Write Love on Her Arms t-shirt. "And your other friends are?"

"We don't have much privacy," he says, shrugging. "Almost all of us are inter-dating and only have eyes for partners, and the ones that eye-hop aren't going to waste their time on me. Too many moles or something. That's what Lydia says, anyway. Way to make me feel good about my excess risk for skin cancer, but whatever. I use lots of sunscreen." He coughs awkwardly. "So, you want to know about the darkness?"

Erin nods. "I want to know what happened."

Stiles sighs. "Everything?"

"Only the parts you think are important."

"Well, most of it is, so get comfortable."

Erin does by pulling her knees up to her chest.

So Stiles launches into the story, telling her about how Jennifer is dead but was killing people to get rid of the alpha pack and how she tricked Derek into knowing secrets so she could kill even more people, how Aiden and Ethan actually _were_ a part of the alpha pack and that Deucalion is still alive out there somewhere, how Jennifer captured the last three parents that are always around in their entire group of friends (Lydia hardly ever even talks to her mom, and Danny's parents work _all the time_, which is how he became friends with Jackson: he's a rich kid too, he's just cooler about it), how he, Scott, and Allison all had to die in ice water with tethers so that they could find where they were being held, and he totally leaves out the fact that he crashed his Jeep because wow embarrassing.

Erin is silent for a long time afterwards, soaking all of it in. She looks…sad. Very, very sad. "How is the darkness affecting all of you?" she asks him. "Scott and Allison seem okay, but…my brother is right. You smile, but it doesn't reach your eyes. You're always changing the subject before anybody talks about something for too long. Why is it affecting you differently than them?"

Stiles huffs, looking away. He's not sure if he's comfortable telling her all of this already, but…nobody has actually asked him that. Not Scott, not Danny, not Lydia… So he tells her anyway: "I think it's because everybody has somebody that they can latch onto to, bringing them out of any major or minor darkness. Scott has Allison or Isaac when Allison is with her dad and then Isaac hangs around them even _if_ Chris isn't around, Danny has Ethan, Lydia has Aiden, my dad hangs out with Scott's mom, and Peter's a creep. I don't have anyone like everybody else does. I _tried_ to hang out with Peter once, actually, and…"

He breathes a laugh, careful not to wake his dad down the hall. "Anyway," he continues, "Peter's a creep. And Chris took me out on a bear hunt two weekends ago, but he kept talking about rabid dogs and how great I would have been if I had been on his side the whole time and that's just awkward considering that my best friend would have been on my hit list. And I've tired to bond with Isaac, but the last time I tried to get him off of the couch while Scott and Lydia were up in his bedroom to go ice-skating or _something_ he just growled at me and locked me outside—with_out_ my keys, by the way. So I'm just…me. It's me and it's all I've got. Alec says he hasn't seen a true, beautiful happiness on me, right?" He sighs. "Truth and beauty are wonderful words, but shrapnel is shrapnel, and at the end of the day, I am alone with the things I have done."

When he looks up at Erin, her sad expression hasn't changed, but now her eyes are glowing a deep, steel blue. Stiles wants to ask who and why she killed, but it's probably not the time. "You know," she says quietly, "the only way that you're going to get out of the darkness is if you distract yourself. You've been trying with that by hanging out with people, but maybe you can try something else. Engross yourself in a movie or some online website that battles mythical creatures. I don't know."

Stiles snorts. "Thanks, but I've already done that before. I got sick of fighting monsters in games because I would meet those monsters in real life and they'd have completely different weakness. It confused me."

"Fine, don't do that. What's something you've always wanted to do?"

Stiles buzzes his lips, lolling his head back to flop down onto his pillow. "If I ever save someone's life, I'm going to pull out my phone and say, 'The subject is safe. The time is whatever time it is and the year is whatever year it is.' Then I'm going to look them in the eye and say, 'Your great, great, great grandson is a very important person,' and just take off running. They will then forever be telling people that they were saved by someone form the future."

Erin stares at Stiles for a few moments before smiling, and then she's actually laughing a little bit. It's a quiet laughter, but it shakes her shoulders, and Stiles smiles back at it. It's been a long time since he's made somebody laugh. All of his friends are too used to him to laugh—unless it's a sleepover and they've all been up for thirty-four hours, or someone is really, really drunk. Usually that's Isaac and Aiden's job. Isaac jumps around between their friends if everyone is hanging out at once. To everyone but Stiles. Little prick.

When she stops laughing, she reaches up to wipe a tear from her cheeks. "Thank you."

Stiles frowns. "What for? You're the one giving me ideas."

"I'm just not a huge laugher."

Stiles breathes a laugh, but his heart is actually snapping halfway through. "I know the same kind of guy."

She tilts her head a little. "Really?"

He nods. "Yeah, he… He's that nephew of Peter's that everyone keeps mentioning. Derek is his name."

"Yeah? What's he like?"

"A lot like you, actually. You know, doesn't laugh much. He started smiling a little more with his last girlfriend, but she turned out to be that homicidal, maniac Darach, so it didn't exactly last. He doesn't look much like Peter, though… Dark hair, jade green eyes that glow blue when he's in his wolf form, and oh my _god_, he works out way too often. It does him good, but it's embarrassing. It's not like everybody is after just him or something. They're after _all_ of us." He huffs. "Anyway, he used to be an alpha, but he gave it up to save his little sister, Cora, when she was poisoned by Jennifer with mistletoe." He smiles. "Cora doesn't remember it, and I never told anyone, but…before all of it was over and Cora was still sick, she and I were sitting in the back of an ambulance. I have no idea why Derek trusted me to watch over here like that. I almost punched him to wake him up in an elevator. Anyway, she stopped breathing at one point, and I had to do the whole CPR thing. It was terrifying." He laughs again. "I guess he trusted me for a good reason."

When he looks up at Erin this time, she's smiling, big and bright and warm and…thankful? "That's amazing," she says. "Why didn't you tell anyone?"

Stiles averts his eyes. "Derek was kind of protective of her, you know? I mean, I know he would have been okay that I saved her, but still. Besides, he left before I could say goodbye."

Erin frowns. "He…he did?"

Stiles nods. "Yup. No text or call, either. I just…I woke up and new he was gone. Straightaway I knew he was gone. When you love somebody you know these things."

Erin's entire face falls. "When you…what?"

Stiles gives her a sad look. "I'm bisexual. Surprise."

Erin gives that little smile at that. "That doesn't surprise me, I just…I didn't know that you were in love with anybody."

"Yeah, well, I hit on you, so…" He shrugs. "You were my distraction for at least an hour. Thanks."

She snorts a little, but her words are soft: "I can keep being your distraction, if you want me to be. I'm not going anywhere for at least a little while."

Stiles finds himself smiling. "You're sure you want that job?"

She shrugs. "It's that or you're sad all the time."

"I might be sad all the time anyway."

"Well, at least you've got somebody to tell things now. What else is he like?"

Stiles smiles, looking down at his fingers. "He was kind of an asshole. I hated him when I first met him, telling me something dumb about private property. I've got it written down somewhere, but it's not important." Stiles may or may not have that box of journals all under his bed right now, but he stopped righting in them a couple of months ago. The psychiatrist that had him start them to cope with his mothers death is dead too now, anyway. "He's got this triple Triskelion tattoo on his back that meant, to him, alpha, beta, and omega. Rise and fall and rise again and shit. He's either standing with his arms crossed or he's got to be doing something with his hands, like sketching some map or unfinished plan or turning the pages of a book or twisting a pencil around. And he's always got blood on his shirt, and he looks _killer_ in a leather jacket, and his smile is like Aphrodite's child or something. I mean, how do people even _think_ about having teeth that perfect?" He huffs. "He never listened to anyone. He always had to do it his way, no matter _how_ idiotic it was. And he has had one _shitty_ love-life. Besides Jennifer he had Kate Argent—Allison's aunt, who's now dead—that used him a few years back so she could burn his entire family, and way back in his freshman year of high school he had to kill his _first_ love because she didn't take to the bite." He sighs. "I don't know, he's probably still an asshole, but sometimes I forget that when he's been gone for this long."

Erin licks her lips, thinking. "Why didn't you ever say anything to him?" she eventually asks.

Stiles snorts. "Say something to Derek about how I've got a crush on him? I don't even know how I would word that. 'Hey, asshole, I don't remember how or when, but I fell in love with you. I know you're like nine years older than me and your type usually consists of people using you, but any chance you wanna go catch a movie sometime?" He huffs. "Yeah right."

And then she looks at him and smiles that kind of "you don't know me at all" kind of smile. Stiles doesn't know why or where it came from, but she speaks again before he can question it:

"But…you love him. Shouldn't you tell someone that you love them?"

Stiles rolls his eyes. "It's hard when two people in an otherwise perfect relationship fucking hate each other. I always pushed his buttons the wrong way, you know? Like…he just glared and threatened me a lot. Besides, Derek never really seemed like the kind of guy that wanted to hear that stuff. He had to kill Paige to end her suffering, he also killed Kate because she was a bitch, and Peter killed Jennifer. A shitty love life like that and I wouldn't want to hear about somebody loving me either."

Erin snorts a little. "I, uh…I guess you've got a point there. He's so far away from everything now, though, right? Are you going to tell him now?"

Stiles snorts. "I doubt it. I'll probably keep it bottled up until I die."

"Do you think you could ever get over him? Because what if he really doesn't ever come back? You'll never see him again and you'll be stuck with buried feelings."

"Distance means so little when you love someone this much, you know? Those feelings are just going to be buried inside forever, I think. Well, maybe not forever. Maybe I'll forget about him when I'm forty. But…that's what this is. It's distance. And I _know_ that he's never coming back because he and Cora don't have anything to live for or look forward to here. Their entire lives were spent around here, and everything about their lives went to hell—or, hey, maybe this world is another planets hell in the first place. But they are _not_ coming back. I stopped hoping for it."

Erin frowns. "Why did you stop? Cora and Isaac still text, don't they?"

Stiles snorts. "Yeah, well now your brother showed up, so Isaac might forget about Cora completely.

Erin nods. "I guess that's true, too."

Stiles sighs, looking away. "It doesn't matter. I can't explain how painful it is to wait for something that never comes. _Never_." He taps his chest. "The darkness makes it worse, of course, but the darkness is still in me. My dad actually got me tested about three weeks ago they said that I should be put on medication before my depression gets any worse."

Erin actually looks taken aback at that. "You mean, Derek and Cora leaving fucked you up so bad that you're—"

"Becoming clinically depressed? No, but their leaving helped it along. I've been pretending for so long, you know? Not to mention the fact that there's an odd number of us that has this darkness. I'm always just…" He flits a wrist. "I already told you about all of the pairings we've got. Even Deaton has his sister, Scott's dad is an asshole, Lydia's ex-boyfriend lives on another continent, and…" He sighs. "Maybe I'll go find Deucalion or something."

Erin's eyes widen. "After everything you've told me of him you're actually thinking about that? Stiles, that's suicide."

"Can't be much worse than you letting my drive your motorcycle."

She rolls her eyes. "Yes it can. Stop thinking about it so hard, you know? You've got me now. Isaac is hanging out with my brother and you're hanging out with me. You definitely do _not_ need Deucalion."

Stiles sighs, rolling onto his side so he can see her better. "Have you ever been in love, Erin? Because I need him. I really, really need him. Like…you hear people say that they need somebody, and then they go on with their lives with smiles and laughter. No. I really need him and he's _gone_. I wish there was a word that meant 'goodbye' from someone who was already gone, you know? Because I didn't even get to say it. Saying goodbye is something that people _do_ when they're about to cut off your arm to save you from a wolfsbane bullet, or holding a part of you after you've had to kill one of your own betas, or—"

"I've been in love," Erin says quietly. "I know what you're saying. Derek just…doesn't really seem like your type."

Stiles bursts into laughter. He actually has to shove his face into his pillow and laugh there to make sure that he doesn't wake up his dad. "You know," he says, wiping his eyes, "I can't decide if this is heaven or hell. The walls keep closing in and we're running out of space, but you're pretty cute."

Erin rolls her eyes, but there's a lightness behind them that Stiles hasn't seen before. "Why _are_ you up, anyway?"

Stiles sighs, dropping onto his back again. "I have no fucking clue. I hate being conscious… It's hard to say I'd rather stay awake when I'm asleep, you know? Getting out of bed to go to school or waking up from a nice dream or just downright _living_. It's all of this darkness shit. A lot of my friends think that I'm fine because I've got friends and they're m life, but… Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it."

Erin nods, looking up at Stiles' glow in the dark stars like Stiles himself was doing earlier. "The world isn't going to end just because we've done everything wrong. Though, that would be easier." She smiles at him. "I'll see you at school tomorrow, okay?"

Stiles smiles. "You mean today?"

She nods, standing. "I'll see you at school today." And then she's gone, disappear out of the window, managing to close it behind her as well.

And when Stiles lies down, all Stiles has to do is close his eyes, and he falls right back asleep.

**OoOoOoO**

_DEREK…_

Derek walks into his place in a daze. Stiles is in love with him? Stiles is in love with him. _Why_ is Stiles in love with him? Even he admitted that Derek is an asshole and that they hate each other. How do you fall in love with someone like that?

Derek gives an aggravated sigh, glaring over at where Cora and Peter are currently watching a movie on the couch. "Why aren't _you two_ sleeping?" he snaps.

"Because you left," Peter says without looking up. "What's your problem? Your heart rate is through the roof."

Derek keeps it to himself for a grand total of four seconds: "Cora, we can't do this anymore," he chokes out.

Cora frowns, also not looking up. "Why not? It's only been two days since we got down here."

"Why not? Because Stiles just confessed that he's in love with me, that's why not. It's eating me up knowing that he might never see me again. He's going to have to start taking anti-depressants!"

Peter raises an eyebrow. "And you let him tell you that?"

"I didn't mean to, he just puked it out!"

Cora chuckles. "O', what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive."

Derek glares. "Cora, I'm serious."

She rolls her eyes. "Oh, suck it up, would you? I'm having fun learning about how the things that Isaac thinks are cute about me."

He frowns. "You mean…Isaac doesn't actually like you like this?"

She snorts. "He likes me all right, but it's just my body. He told me that straight up and that he's got a thing for Peter's niece, Cora, and they text all the time. He's got her number memorized, so I can't give him mine since they're…well, the same number."

"And _you're_ just letting _him_ tell you all of that?"

She grins. "Yup."

He rolls his eyes. "You're sick."

"You're only as sick as your secrets, kiddo," Peter pipes up.

"Then we're disgusting!"

Cora raises an eyebrow again. "Are you seriously having an attack of morals _now_? When have you ever had one of those? I mean, come on. If God is watching us, the least we can do is be entertaining."

Peter chuckles. "Do you regret agreeing to this, yet?"

Derek sighs before glaring over at Cora. "I don't regret the things I do _or_ the things I didn't do. I mostly regret the things _you_ do."

She shrugs. "And I have no regrets in the matter."

"Come on, Derek," Peter says, turning the TV off. "You just found out that Stiles has a crush on you. Why don't you do something about it?"

"Because I don't like him back!"

"Well, what if he starts to like _you_? I mean, who he thinks 'Erin' is."

Derek sighs, moving to sit between them. "I think that's called Karma and it's pronounced, 'Haha, fuck you'."

Cora snorts. "Alright, little sister," she says, flipping a pocket knife out of her pocket. "There's two ways we can do this. The easy way, or I cut you."

Derek rolls his eyes. "That would heal in a second."

"I'm just saying that you're not going to ruin this for me, dude. You promised for one whole week on the flight down."

"She's right," Peter says, snatching her knife away and flipping it across the room so it sticks into the desk by the wall of windows. "You agreed. You're stuck like this for another five days."

Derek sighs, rubbing his forehead. "Do we at least have the potion perfected?"

"Completely," Peter says, "but I'm not giving it to either of you until it's all over."

Cora grins over at him. "You really aren't a good person, but damn, you make bad look awesome."

Peter smirks, standing up. "I do, don't I?" He heads towards the door. "See you two around! I've got some errands to run."

Derek gives an aggravated sigh before looking over at Cora. "You had this planned out the whole time, didn't you?"

She gives an even better smirk than Peter usually gives. "Possibly."

He huffs. "I should have known. After all, you've lied to everybody else; I was beginning to feel left out."

She chuckles, standing up as well. "Watch some TV, Derek. Take your mind off things."

Derek does, falling asleep on the couch.

* * *

References: There are **25** references in this chapter:

**0.** "And if you're still breathing, you're the lucky ones  
'Cause most of us are breathing through corrupted lungs  
Setting fir to our insides for fun  
Collecting names of the lovers that went wrong." Youth by Daughter (song).

**1.** "Waking up is nice, for those first few moments, before you remember who and what you are." Asofterworld.

**2.** "Is there no way out of the mind?" Sylvia Plath.

**3.** "No, I won't return your phone calls. I like them and I want to keep them." Alpner.

**4.** "Truth and Beauty are wonderful words, but shrapnel is shrapnel, and at the end of the day, I am alone with the things I have done." Asofterworld.

**5.** "If I ever save someone's life, I'm going to pull out my phone and say, 'The subject is safe. The time is whatever time it is and the year is whatever year it is.' Then I'm going to look them in the eye and say, "Your great, great, great grandson is a very important person," and just take off running. They will then forever be telling people that they were saved by someone form the future." Some random Facebook screenshot I saw on tumblr with the names blotted out.

**6.** "I woke up and new he was gone. Straightaway I knew he was gone. When you love somebody you know these things." David Almond, _Skellig_.

**7.** "And then she looks at him and smiles that kind of "you don't know me at all kind of smile". I think it's season 2 of the UK skins, with Mrs. Stonem talking about her daughter, Effy.

**8.** "It's hard when two people in an otherwise perfect relationship fucking hate each other." Asofterworld.

**9.** "Distance means so little when you love someone this much." Unknown.

**10.** "Maybe this world is another planets hell in the first place." Aldous Huxley.

**11.** I can't explain how painful it is to wait for something that never comes. _Never_." Unknown.

**12.** "I wish there was a word that meant 'goodbye' from someone who was already gone." Asofterworld.

**13.** "I can't decide if this is heaven or hell. The walls keep closing in and we're running out of space, but you're pretty cute." Asofterworld.

**14.** "It's hard to say I'd rather stay awake when I'm asleep." Fireflies by Owl City.

**15.** "Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it." Terry Pratchett

**16.** "The world isn't going to end just because we've done everything wrong. Though, that would be easier." Asofterworld.

**17.** "O', what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive." Walter Scott.

**18.** "You're only as sick as your secrets." The Bride Collector by Ted Dekker (book).

**19.** "If God is watching us, the least we can do is be entertaining." Alpner.

**20.** "I don't regret the things I do _or_ the things I didn't do. I mostly regret the things _you_ do." Asofterworld.

**21.** "That's called Karma and it's pronounced, 'Haha, fuck you'." Aditya Jalgaonkar, I believe.

**22.** "There's two ways we can do this. The easy way, or I cut you." Asofterworld.

**23.** "You really aren't a good person, but damn, you make bad look awesome." Asofterworld.

**24.** "After all, you've lied to everybody else; I was beginning to feel left out." Aladdin (movie).


	4. 3: Now Life is Beautiful

**3: Now Life is Beautiful**

_Don't know how it's gonna end  
How far you're gonna bend  
I'm never gonna walk away_

_I can't stop how I'm feeling_  
_It's like I need you_  
_And if you let me, I can fix you_  
_Let me fix you_

_STILES…_

Stiles doesn't realize where he's going until he gets there: Peter's place, parked down at the bottom. He meant to go to school, but…well, apparently that didn't happen. He knocks lightly on the door to their place, smiling lightly when Peter opens it up.

"Stiles?" he says, eyebrow raised. "Don't you have school today?"

"Yeah," he says, "but I was wondering if Erin was still here."

He glances behind him. "She's passed out on the couch."

Stiles frowns. "Oh. Well…never mind, then."

Peter purses his lips. "Uh, okay. Want me to relay a message?"

He shakes his head. "No, just, um… That spare key that Derek left behind still accesses the roof, right?"

He frowns. "Yeah."

"Awesome, thanks."

Stiles walks away, stepping into the stairwell so he can get up to the roof. It's colder than it would be because of the wind, being that the building is actually pretty tall. He walks over to the ledge just across from the door, leaning against it and looking down at everyone.

Jumping. Is it really that easy? You jump and you die. Or is there more to it? Do you realize that you still want to live on the way down? It's like, you decided to kill yourself, and now life is beautiful. Like a city looking greener and greener the smaller it gets out the airplane window. And are you afraid while you die? Terrified to go but terrified to stay? That's Stiles' problem. Terrified to go because he knows that he really does have people that love him even though they're not helping him very well, but he's terrified to stay _because_ they're not helping him very well. He doesn't want anybody to know how terrified he is if he goes… The only thing we leave behind when we die is fear, because, in suicide, even when your brain has made itself up, your body fights back.

"Stiles?"

Stiles realizes that he's sitting on the ledge of the building, now, instead of just standing by it. He looks back from staring down at the people below him (they haven't noticed him yet, which is fine. He isn't planning on actually jumping anyway) to see that Erin is standing there, eyes wide and scared.

"Hey," he says to her. "You woke up. What brings you up here?"

She swallows tightly. "Peter told me that you said something about Derek's old key accessing the roof," she says as she takes a few steps closer. "Do you wanna, maybe, come sit over here in the middle with me? It'll be…safer."

Stiles scoffs, looking back down at the streets below. "There is no safer. There's not even safe, never has been."

"Stiles, please…"

"I'm not going to jump, Erin," he says, setting a hand beside him and patting it. "Come sit with me. The view is awesome from here." Not that he didn't notice it until just now or anything.

Erin let's out a breath of relief. Stiles isn't usually glad that werewolves can tell when people are lying, but right now he is. She swings out and sits beside him, obviously confident in her own reflexes that she's not going to fall. "What are you doing up here, Stiles?"

Stiles lets out a shaky breath, realizing that she's going to be the only one he tells things anymore and she's a _stranger_. "I don't want to be like this," he chokes out. "I've been running these streets for too long now, okay? Fighting monsters and hoping that one day I'll get a call from him, and the further I go, I just wanna go home. I mean…what's if there's more? What if there's something better out there and I'm just sitting here waiting for something that's never going to come? I don't want a world without pain or loss. I just want them to _mean_ something!"

Stiles looks over at Erin's face to see that those wide, scared eyes are now wide and sad. "Stiles…you're not okay. You pretend that you're okay all the time, but you…" She stops, swallowing tightly.

Stiles shrugs, looking straight out at the other buildings around them. "Even in laughter the heart may ache, and joy may end in grief."

Erin sighs. "The darkness is really getting to you, isn't it? Getting into your heart and bogging you down? It's killing you…"

Stiles nods. "If we couldn't carry our dead inside of us, though, we would be empty."

Erin reaches over and takes a hold of one of his hands. Her hands are warm and firm and strong. Stiles can't remember the last time that somebody held his hand—for any reason. "I want to be the one you can talk to, Stiles. I want to make you happy again. I want to teach you how to breathe."

Stiles gives her a sad smile. "Besides the fact that I'm known for my panic attacks, you can only be as happy as the person you're in love with is, and I don't even have a way of knowing if he's still alive."

Erin sighs, letting go of his hand and just resting it against the stone they're sitting on. "I think you're afraid to be happy, because whenever you get too happy, something bad always happens."

Stiles frowns a little bit, glancing over at her. Another thing that's so Derek that it makes Stiles wants to cry. "What's wrong with you, then?" he asks quietly. "I can't be the only one who hates most of my life."

She breathes a laugh, looking over at him. "The terrible things that happened to you didn't make you you. You always were." She reaches over to take his hand again. "Imagine how happy you might be if you spend less time imagining how happy you might be, Stiles."

Stiles blinks for a long time before squeezing her hand and looking away. "How about we think about how great sleeping would be if we never woke up instead?"

Erin shakes her head, tugging at Stiles' hand. "No, don't think that. It hurts more than just you."

Stiles looks back. "If you want to be the one that makes me happy then you've got to listen to everything I say, and then if I start breathing too _hard_ you'll have to figure out how to make me hold my breath."

Erin bites onto her bottom lip before nodding. "Tell me."

Stiles looks down, dangling his legs a little. "I hope my plane crashes, or my train de-rails, or I'm shot in a drive-by. I hope something changes, because _anything_ different is good. Except the problem with that is that good just keeps going and going until it seems more like 'okay'."

Erin squeezes his hand a bit. "What else?"

Stiles sighs. "Sometimes I feel like we get lost in our own thoughts, you know? It's as if we're running through the woods in opposite directions, searching for each other. But then we find one another and we smile and wave. Because we both know, all the while, we were just standing right next to each other. But then it's just yourself that you've got inside of your head because everybody deals with things differently and you realize how _lonely_ you really are, and obviously the easiest way not to get hurt is not to care, but that is the hardest thing to do!"

Erin scoots a little closer to him. "I'm not a lot older than you are, but it's just enough that I know what I'm talking about it. I know that living is easy with your eyes closed and that it's hard being someone, but it all works out in the end. People who go away either wish they didn't or they find who they really are wherever they went, and the ones that wish they didn't ever leave at all get to come back and realize how great everything they had really was. The way you're talking about leaving, though…it hurts people. Anyone around you that happens to overhear it."

Stiles shakes his head, looking over at her. "I would never hurt another human being for free. I know that you're a couple of years older than I am and that I should look up to you and your words, but everyone you look up to is really as fucked up as you…"

Erin's face is taken aback at that, but Stiles just continues:

"I keep on fighting, but I can't keep going on this way! We're told lies like it's truth, Erin, and that's the problem. I don't want to go through with life with people telling me that it's going to be okay and that it's going to be better. It's _not_ going to be okay, _okay_? It's not ever going to be okay!"

"No, that's not true!" she says, shaking her head. "It's not going to get better if you don't _let_ it get better. I'm learning that from you, right this very second. I've had so much pain in my life and so much heartbreak and people turn on me and use me every second of my life and I don't realize it until it's too late and I've kept it all to myself so I don't have to have any help getting over it but _that's not how to do it_. You have to tell people—me, anyone—everything you can and then you have to _let_ them help you. You can't just come up here very day and stare out over the edge because one day your plane really is going to crash and you're going to find yourself at the bottom—and you won't have hurt any human beings for free, Stiles. You'll have paid the price of your entire life. You'll be dead." She reaches over and takes Stiles' other hand. "I don't want you to die, I want you to _survive_. Shit happens, I know that. But if growing up were so easy, Stiles, would it take so long? You think you're all alone because of this darkness, but you've still got your friends! You've still got Scott and Allison and Lydia and Danny and the twins. Just because Scott is in love with Allison and Danny is in love with Ethan and Lydia is with Aiden and Peter is a creep and Isaac spends his time texting Cora and everybody else spends their time doing something else doesn't mean you're _alone_. Where did your mind go to make you think that you're all alone in a world where you're saving peoples' lives with your best friends? Did you keep running in the opposite direction of your own mind when you got lost in there?"

Stiles swallows tightly and yanks both of his hands away from Erin's grip, careful not to teeter on the ledge. "I am not lost. I know exactly where I am. I just hate it here. I'm fucking _drowning_, Erin, and everybody else is breathing right next to me! Depression is like slashing at ghosts. Of course it's tempting to finally cut something real."

Erin is silent for a long time before he licks his lips. "Did you just say—"

Stiles shakes his head, knowing that if he lies out loud that he'll be caught. He's better at silent lies.

But Erin grabs one of his hands anyway, pulling his left arm towards him (obviously it'd be his left arm if he's right handed, dammit).

"Erin, no, don't, please—"

She shoves the sleeve of his long sleeve up, causing Stiles to hiss, but she holds firm when he tries to pull his arm away.

"Let go of me," he says, still pulling.

"Stiles…" Erin whispers, pulling him even closer. "I can't even count how many there are…"

Stiles gets his arm away after that, yanking his sleeve back down. "Forty-seven," he snaps. "_Happy_? I swear to god, if you tell anyone, I will end you."

Erin swallows tightly, retracting both of her hands into her lap. "Stiles, can I… Can I ask you something?"

Stiles looks away from him, out over the city. "I don't care," he mutters. "I've been telling you everything else anyway."

She licks her lips. "Do you think it's possible to live your whole life being somebody else?"

Stiles frowns, but he doesn't look back at her. "Of course you can live your whole life without being you. But why?"

Erin suddenly flips over the side, landing in a standing position on the actual roof. "I have to go," she says, backing away quickly. "I have an idea."

Stiles frowns, swinging one leg over to watch her go. "What? Who are you going to tell?!" He swings his other leg over. "Come back here, you bitch!"

Erin shakes her head, opening the door to get back inside. "I'm not telling anybody, I promise. I'll see you you're done with work under Morell, okay? Don't go to bed tonight."

Stiles finds himself just standing at the door as she slams it shut, wondering what the hell is going to happen.

**OoOoOoO**

_DEREK…_

Derek slides back into his place with a pair of fuzzy socks (he loves that Peter fixed everything up and put in hardwood floors; they bring out the _real_ high school senior in him) before going into the back room that Peter had installed for his own bedroom.

"Peter!" he says loudly, knowing that his uncle is still there. Cora herself already went to school. "Peter, I need your help!" Derek almost just told Stiles that Erin and Alec are _actually_ just Derek and Cora, but he decided against it. There were things he wanted to tell him about all the lies, but he knew they would hurt him, so he buried them and let them hurt himself.

Peter raises an eyebrow from where he's doing paperwork on his bed. He probably heard him coming a few seconds ago. "With what?"

"An Abraham Lincoln costume."

"A…what?"

"You heard me."

"_Why_?"

"I need to cheer up Stiles."

He raises both eyebrows. "Did he tell you more stuff?"

He nods. "_Lots_ more, and he needs my help, but I need yours to do it. Will you help or not?"

He rolls her eyes. "Fine."

**OoOoOoO**

_STILES…_

Stiles sighs when somebody knocks on the front door. He ended up just going to school, and he just got back from Marin's office about twenty minutes ago. Now he's just lying across his couch watching random TV shows since his dad is working tonight, leaving him alone to his own devices.

He forces himself to get up now, though, so he can go open the door and reveal—his eyebrows shoot up. "Erin?" In an Abraham Lincoln costume. What the literal fuck.

She gives a stern, defiant face and holds up her fancy schmancy iPhone. "FOUR CALLS AND SEVEN TEXTS AGO…!"

Stiles doesn't even have time to question what's going on. He bursts into laughter so hard that his knees give out, sending him to cry from it on floor. Erin has to stop her speech completely after that, bending down to help him up. Her top hat falls off, though, and her beard tickles his face, so it sort of just makes it worse. Being that she's a werewolf, though, she easily picks him up and carries him to flop him back over the couch.

"Oh my god," Stiles says, wiping his eyes. "Thank you."

Erin gives that little smile Stiles is really starting to like. "You're welcome."

"No, I'm serious. Thank you for making me laugh when I'd almost forgotten how to."

Erin's smile becomes a little bit warmer. "You're welcome, Stiles."

Stiles' smile drains away a little bit, staring up at where Erin is leaning over him. He doesn't like her. Not like that. It's only been a couple of days. But she's pretty and she's funny and she didn't run away when he yelled about the boys coming for her milkshake. "When I look at you," he whispers, "all I can see are the mistakes we're going to make."

Erin swallows lightly, her eyes shimmering in the dim light of the room. "And if it feels so good then it can't be wrong, right?" she whispers.

Stiles leans up for the lightest of kisses, and as he starts to drop back down to the couch she comes right with him, continuing on with the kiss. Stiles has kissed people before, but he never thought that he would kiss somebody besides Derek after falling in love with him. He reaches his hands up to tangle into Erin's hair, holding her against him. She reaches a hand to hold onto the arm he's got around her, crawling on over him to fit perfectly above his body. She's about the same size that Heather was…

"I know I can't make you love me," Erin whispers against his lips, "but I wish I could make you shut up about not loving me."

**OoOoOoO**

_DEREK…_

What is Derek doing? What is he _doing_?! _WHAT IS DEREK DOING?!_

He watches Stiles' face carefully at his words, the tight swallow and the sad brown eyes. Derek knows that Stiles is technically in love with him, but to Stiles, Erin will never be Derek no matter how similar they are. It's not the same thing.

_What the fuck is Derek doing_?

Stiles gives another tight swallow, staring up at him. "I'm in love with the you I wish you were," he chokes out. "I only stay with you because you act like him. I'm sorry."

If Derek wasn't really Derek that would probably break his heart, but he knows the truth, so he just leans down and kisses the teen again. It tastes bitterer than before, and Stiles delves his tongue into his open mouth. Derek didn't know that apologies could have a taste.

They stay like that on the couch for a long time, but eventually they're moving like in a dream, getting up from the couch and kissing their way up the stairs and into Stiles' bedroom. Stiles locks the door behind him and kicks his shoes off as Derek is pulling off his own shirt, and that's about as far as they get before crashing onto the bed.

Derek knows that Stiles is a virgin, but he doesn't say anything about it, just letting the night go on exactly how he knows they want it to. He uses his fingers and his mouth just fine if how wet Derek is has anything to say about it, and being that he's technically a virgin in this body it does hurt a bit when Stiles finally pushes in, but because he's a werewolf it's dull.

Stiles talks less than Derek would have imagined, but that might just be because of the darkness. Derek holds him tight, careful not to claw through his skin when he can't keep them away any longer, and careful not to bite him when a few of his canines poke through, and it doesn't really matter when his eyes shine to their beta blue.

Derek isn't sure how Stiles is able to give him an orgasm on his first time, but he doesn't complain, sucking at a spot on Derek's neck as he spills into the condom he kept in one of his drawers. They just stay like that for a few moments, not staring at each other and just letting their breathing calm. When Stiles finally pulls out he tosses the tied-off rubber into the trashcan beside his bed, and Derek instantly pulls him down on his side to get pulled into his arms. Stiles holds him tightly back, staring at each other some more.

It isn't until Derek's eyes and fangs and claws have retracted to their human look that either of them speak:

"I love those quiet moments in the dark where you can stop pretending," Stiles whispers, bumping his nose against the tip of Derek's.

Derek realizes that the lights really are off, but he doesn't comment on it. "I feel like we're perfectly in sync," he says softly, "both of us imagining that I'm someone else."

Stiles pulls him closer, pressing a kiss to his forehead before tucking his face into the crook of his neck. "If I could change anything about you," he says, voice muffled, "it would be a mistake."

Derek swallows tightly, knowing that that wouldn't be true if he knew the truth. "Stiles, I…" But he trails off. He can't tell him yet. Not right now, when he's so vulnerable and raw. He's not falling in love with him, and he doesn't even like him, but… Derek chokes out a cough, burying his face into Stiles' chest. _He is not falling in love with him_, but here Derek is with him like this, feeling like he's betrayed someone. _Welcome to the land where dreams become nightmares_, Derek thinks to himself.

Derek wets his lips before going to speak again: "You couldn't really say that something that hurts so badly feels good exactly," he says, voice strained even in its whisper. "It's more that it just feels right. And something that feels so right just couldn't be bad. It has to be good."

Stiles turns his head a little bit to get his mouth to Derek's ear. "You feel right," he says, broken. "Maybe you and I were meant to be together, even if we weren't mean tot be happy."

Derek closes his eyes and pulls in a deep breath. He lied to Stiles about who he was, and here he is just making it worse. And now he could tell him, but he just can't.

"Maybe," Derek whispers, tucking himself deeper into Stiles' arms. "We'll see."

"Goodnight, Erin."

"Goodnight, Stiles."

Derek is a monster, preying on the ghost of a man that Stiles doesn't know is right beside him. Monsters are real. Ghosts are real, too. They live inside of us, and sometimes, they win.

* * *

References: There are **44** references in this chapter:

**0.** "Don't know how it's gonna end  
How far you're gonna bend  
I'm never gonna walk away

I can't stop how I'm feeling  
It's like I need you  
And if you let me, I can fix you  
Let me fix you." Fix You by Vita Chambers (song).

**1.** Decided to kill yourself, and now life is beautiful. Like a city looking greener and greener the smaller it gets out the airplane window." Asofterworld.

**2.** The only thing we leave behind when we die is fear." Asofterworld.

**3.** "In suicide, even when your brain has made itself up, your body fights back." Katherine Martin.

**4.** "There is no safer. There's not even safe, never has been." Wintergirls by Laurie Anderson (book).

**5.** "I don't want to be like this, I've been running these streets for too long now…. And the further I go, I just wanna go home." The Diary by Hollywood Undead (song).

**6.** "What's if there's more?" What If by Nichole Nordman (song).

**7.** "I don't want a world without pain or loss. I just want them to mean something." Asofterworld.

**8.** "Even in laughter the heart may ache, and joy may end in grief." Proverbs 14:13 (Bible verse).

**9.** "If we couldn't carry our dead inside of us, though, we would be empty." Asofterworld.

**10.** "You can only be as happy as the person you're in love with is." Daniel Radcliffe.

**11.** "I think I'm afraid to be happy, because whenever I get too happy, something bad always happens." Alpner.

**12.** "The terrible things that happened to you didn't make you you. You always were." Asofterworld.

**13.** "Imagine how happy you might be if you spend less time imagining how happy you might be." Asofterworld.

**14.** "How great sleeping would be if we never woke up." Asofterworld.

**15.** "I hope my plane crashes, or my train de-rails, or I'm shot in a drive-by. I hope something changes." Asofterworld.

**16.** "Anything different is good." Groundhog Day (movie).

**17.** "Good just keeps going and going until it seems more like 'okay'." Asofterworld.

**18.** "Sometimes I feel like we get lost in our own thoughts, you know? It's as if we're running through the woods in opposite directions, searching for each other. But then we find one another and we smile and wave. Because we both know, all the while, we were just standing right next to each other." Unknown.

**19.** "The easiest way not to get hurt is not to care, but that is the hardest thing to do." Unknown.

**20.** "Living is easy with your eyes closed. … It's hard being someone but it all works out." Strawberry Fields by the Beatles (song).

**21.** "I would never hurt another human being for free." Asofterworld.

**22.** "But everyone you look up to is really as fucked up as you." Pain by Hollywood Undead (song).

**23.** "I keep on fighting, but I can't keep going on this way." Sell Your Soul by Hollywood Undead (song).

**24.** "We're told lies like it's truth." Pain by Hollywood Undead (song).

**25.** If growing up were so easy, Fifle, would it take so long?" Fifle Goes West (movie).

**26.** "I am not lost. I know exactly where I am. I just hate it here." Unknown.

**27.** "I'm fucking _drowning_, Erin, and everybody else is breathing right next to me!" This is sort of a mash-up of things, but the idea isn't my own, so there. All the quotes I've found are unknown anyway.

**28.** "Depression is like slashing at ghosts. Of course it's tempting to finally cut something real." Asofterworld.

**29.** "Of course you can live your whole life without being you. But why?" Asofterworld.

**30.** "There were things I wanted to tell him, but I knew they would hurt him, so I buried them and let them hurt me." Unknown.

**31.** "Four calls and seven texts ago…" A random internet thing I found. It was some dude who looked just like Lincoln and scrolling through his cell phone. It makes me laugh until I cry like every time.

**32.** "Thank you for making me laugh when I'd almost forgotten how to." Pam Brown.

**33.** "When I look at you, all I can see are the mistakes we're going to make." Asofterworld.

**34.** "And if it feels so good then it can't be wrong." Comin' in Hot by Hollywood Undead (song).

**35.** "I know I can't make you love me, but I wish I could make you shut up about not loving me." Asofterworld.

**36.** "I'm in love with the you I wish you were. I only stay with you because you look like him." Asofterworld.

**37.** "I love those quiet moments in the dark where you can stop pretending." Asofterworld.

**38.** "I feel like we're perfectly in sync, both of us imagining that I'm someone else." Asofterworld.

**39.** "If I could change anything about you, it would be a mistake." Asofterworld.

**40.** " Welcome to the land where dreams become nightmares." Been to Hell by Hollywood Undead (song).

**41.** "You couldn't really say that something that hurts so badly feels good exactly. It's more that it just feels right. And something that feels so right just couldn't be bad. It has to be good." Willow by Julia Hoban (book).

**42.** "Maybe you and I were meant to be together, even if we weren't mean tot be happy." Asofterworld.

**43.** "Monsters are real. Ghosts are real, too. They live inside of us, and sometimes, they win." Stephen King.


	5. 4: Gonna Get It

**4: Gonna Get It**

_Promise me to think of us as a time so wonderful  
Promise me to think of us—still bright, still colorful  
Promise me to look back at us as a time in your life you enjoyed_

_STILES…_

Stiles stretches, already knowing before his arms feel an empty bed that Erin is gone. It's Saturday, which means Stiles doesn't have to go in to school or work. Which means he just gets to sit around and sulk.

Upon sitting up, though, he sees that Scott and Isaac are both passed out on his floor. He's got to yell to wake them up, which he's used to. Scott glares at Isaac. "It was your turn to watch him!"

"No way, that did not happen again!" Isaac growls. "It was _your_ turn."

Scott sighs. "I don't care whose turn it was, he's awake now."

Stiles frowns. "You guys were watching me?"

They nod, crawling forward to sit at the end of his bed. "You were acting worse than usual yesterday, so we decided you needed a friend."

Stiles averts his eyes. "I already had a friend, but she left."

Isaac frowns. "You were with Erin?"

Stiles swallows tightly. "We had sex."

The two wolves stare at him with wide eyes and dropped jaws.

"I _told_ you he smelled different!" Isaac says, shoving at Scott's shoulder. "I _told_ you!"

"Alright, alright!" Scott snarls, pushing him away. He looks back at Stiles, eyes red. "Where is she? I'm going to kill her. She took advantage of you and—"

"Scott, shut up!" Stiles yells. "I kissed her first, okay!"

He frowns, eyes going back to normal. "But…you love Derek."

Stiles frowns as well. "You know that?"

"All of us know that," Isaac says, rolling his eyes. "We just play dumb with you sometimes."

Stiles huffs, looking away again. "Well, leave her alone, it was my fault."

"I don't think so," Scott says, standing. "I'm going to find her and talk to her."

"Scott, no, please, it's not impor—"

But Scott is already gone, so Isaac shrugs and flits after him. Stiles sighs angrily, getting up to look out of his window. Scott storms out first, going to his car, but then Isaac is actually skipping out after him, swinging Stiles' baseball bat.

"Someone's gonna get it!" he sings, curls bouncing along with him.

Stiles' heart breaks a little bit more. Scott's _his_ best friend. _He's_ always been the one to skip beside him to go break somebody's face, but now Stiles is stuck in his room because they're going to break a face _for_ him.

He sighs, dropping onto the bed to glare at things.

Someone knocks on the window, though, and he looks up to see Erin crawling in and over the bed so that she can sit down beside Stiles where he's sulking. "You know he'd rather you be with you," she says without any explanation at all as to why she left in the first place. "Good friends are like stars. You don't always have to see them, but you know that they're still there."

Stiles huffs a little. "Sometimes I wonder," he mumbles.

"Why? He's you're best friend. Isaac is just his and Allison's kid, right?"

"Parents always love their kids more than anything else."

Erin rolls her eyes. "You know, he still thinks of you as his best friend. Who cares if Isaac is always around, too? You're not the only one that needs a friend, you know. He doesn't have _either_ of his parents. When life hands you lemons, take the lemons and be thankful you got anything."

Stiles huffs. "Too bad life doesn't _actually_ hand you lemons."

Erin shrugs. "_If_ life hands you lemons, be cool. It's just the drugs."

Stiles smiles a little, even though he hurts. "I'm really fucking glad you came along, you know that?"

She grins. "I do. Why is Scott your best friend, though? Is it just because you've known each other for so long?"

Stiles looks back out the window even though he can't see anyone anymore. "To me he is literally the definition of friendship."

"Well, what's your definition for it?"

Stiles smiles brighter, mostly to himself. He asked his mom this question, once, and memorized her answer. "Friendship is the comfort, the inexpressible comfort, of feeling safe with a person. Having neither to weigh thoughts nor to measure words, but to pour all of them out just as they are, chaff and grain together. Certain that a friendly, faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping and with a breath of comfort blow the rest away."

Erin stares at him with a very wide-eyed look. "Did you come up with that all on your own?"

Stiles breathes a laugh. "No, it was from my mom. She asked me why Scott was my best friend a long time ago, too, and told me that as her reason why she thought we were such good friends."

Erin tilts her head a little. "You talk about her differently than most people do."

Stiles nods, averting his eyes a little. "She died about ten years ago."

The expression on Erin's face is like that of a kicked puppy. "Oh. You were friends with Scott before she died?"

He nods. "I was seven, and I met him just a few months before. Can we change the subject?"

Erin nods fervently. "What do you think life would look like?"

Stiles latches onto it like a lifeline. "Lady Life?"

"Lady? How do you know it's not _Lord_ Life?"

"Because it's _Mother_ Nature."

"But it's _Father_ Time."

Stiles rolls his eyes. "Forget it."

Erin gives him a warm smile. "You know what you need?"

"What?"

"A night out."

Stiles frowns. "A night out? It's barely noon." It's barely noon? Damn, Stiles doesn't even remember the last time he slept in passed nine, let alone till noon…

She nods, standing up. "We'll watch movies with Alec and Peter until it's late enough, and then Alec can fix us up. Care for another ride on my bike?"

Stiles sighs, standing with her. "I'm going to regret this so much."

Alec and Peter inform them that they _just_ missed Scott and Alec, and after Derek gives his idea of a night out Alec fixes them both up right away so she can ditch and go hang out with Isaac. They get in three movies before they decide that it's a good time to go, but just before they leave, Peter pops up behind them.

"You're going to sneak into a bar?" He gives Erin an eyebrow wiggle, but the blue-eyed wolf bares her fangs to make him stop. "I can't let you go into a bar without teaching you my famous anti-pickup lines."

Stiles gives a confused look. "Anti-pickup lines?"

"Comebacks to pickup lines when they're given to you by people you don't like," Erin explains.

Stiles grins. "I've never had to do that before."

Peter grins, moving to sit down in front of them. "I know. Now, repeat carefully after me…"

**XxX**

Stiles lets out a relieved sigh as he and Erin collapse into two stools at the bar after dancing in the throng of people (not really with anyone, just there). They were only able to get into the gay bar (the one that Stiles and Scott went to rescue Danny from and Stiles tried coming out to his dad about being bisexual and was instantly shot down; he's not strictly gay, anyway) since Stiles still keeps in contact with most of the people he ran into there, including the bouncer.

"I am so thirsty." He waves his hand and orders a coke.

Erin rolls her eyes and orders a scotch.

"You are so not old enough for a scotch," Stiles hisses at him.

She smirks a little. "Watch me drink it anyway."

Stiles rolls his eyes. "Oh-ho-ho, look at how sophisticated and mysterious I am."

Erin raises an eyebrow as their drinks come back. "Would you prefer I order a round of tequila shots?"

Stiles lolls his tongue out. "Please validate my coolness!"

She frowns. "Do you have a reaction to all drinks?"

"Most of them."

"Give me Jaeger shots."

"I also need validation"—he squints his face up—"but tequila tastes grooooss."

"Martini?"

He gives a sad frown. "This doesn't really work when I'm not wearing a tuxedo, does it?"

Erin snorts around a sip of scotch. "Vodka and soda?"

Stiles clicks his tongue and puts up finger guns. "I'm just trying to get drunk."

"Vodka and an energy drink?"

Stiles throws his arms into the air. "I'm just trying to get DRUNKER THAN ANYONE HAS EVER BEEN!" He gets a few looks at that, but most of them are just grins, and Erin laughs a little, so who cares?

"Vodka and cranberry?"

He pushes his lips out in a duck face. "I'm a girl."

"Light beer?"

He throws up peace signs. "I'm here to party."

"Fancy beer?"

Stiles rolls his eyes. "Why am I even here?"

"Whiskey?"

Stiles gives Erin' glass a wrinkled nose look. "Wait, is whiskey any different from scotch?"

Erin gives a crooked smile. "Bourbon?"

Stiles holds his hands up in a shrug and scrunches his face up again. "Honestly these all taste terrible and I can't tell the difference between them."

Erin gives the most unladylike snort that Stiles has ever heard in his life, shoving her glass away. "Maybe I'll just drink a fancy cocktail."

Stiles crosses his eyes and sucks his chin into his neck. "I'm interesting."

She rolls her eyes. "Okay, okay, gin and tonic?"

Stiles droops his eyelids. "I'm boring."

"A bloody mary?"

He holds his glass to his forehead with a sick look. "I'm hungover."

He points at Stiles' drink. "Plain soda?"

Stiles grins brightly, gives a thumbs up, and holds up his Coke. "I'm taking one for the team by driving tonight!"

Erin smirks a little. "And _water_?"

Stiles snorts before plastering on his best Derek impression. "I'm only here because I'm fucking driving tonight."

Erin laughs again. "Maybe you should—" He cuts off with wide eyes and quick spins away from looking at Stiles at all.

Stiles frowns a little, but the action is soon explained when a creepy looking man leans between them, staring at Stiles with an equally creepy grin. "Hey there, honey. Could I buy you a drink?"

Erin turns around to smirk a little from the other side of the guy. "Actually," Stiles says, "I'd rather have the money."

He chuckles. "That sounds familiar. Haven't I seen you someplace before?"

Stiles rolls his eyes a little. "Yes, that's why I don't go there anymore."

He's staring to look to look a little annoyed, but he still says one more damn thing: "Come on, I think I could make you very happy."

"Why? Are you leaving?"

At that he glares, huffs, and walks away.

Stiles laughs and accepts the high-five that Erin offers him. "That was awesome," she says with that little smile Stiles decides he's in love with. Just the smile, at least. "Three in a row!"

"It wasn't as good as the reaction you got from 'where have to been all my life' before we started dancing, though."

Erin smirks a little. "'Hiding from _you_.'"

Stiles laughs. "I'm so glad we came here."

"Me too. Wanna go?"

He nods. "Yup."

The walk out with a wave to the bouncer, shoving their hands into their pockets to walk down to where Erin parked her motorcycle.

"So, what's your full name?" he asks her. "Like, what's your middle name?"

"It's Ares," she says. "You know, the Greek God of War? Alec's is Neptune, like the Roman God of the Sea. Our parents were into that sorta stuff."

Stiles blinks at him a bit. "Your initials spell 'ear'."

Erin huffs, rolling her eyes and looking away. "I _know_. Alec and Peter don't let me forget it."

Stiles grins. "Bet you can't guess my real name."

She frowns. "It's…not Stiles?"

He snorts. "No way. Stiles Stilinski? I sound like a freak. Stiles is just a nickname."

She nods. "Can I _try_ to guess?"

He shrugs. "You can try."

She hums a little, thinking. "Sarid?"

"Uh, no. And it doesn't start with an 'S."

"Shelby? Wait, no that's an 'S'. Ronald? Fifle? Lucius?"

Stiles grins. "Lucius is Draco's dad in Harry Potter. Pick another dad from the series and you'll figure it out."

Erin snorts. "James? Lupin? Amos? Percival? Vernon?" She bites her lip. "I can't think of anymore."

Stiles grins wider. "Do you remember the name of Luna's dad?"

Erin's eyes widen. "I remember that it's long."

Stiles nods. "And very hard to spell. It's Xenophilius."

Erin laughs loudly, stopping at her bike. "You're kidding!"

Stiles shakes his head. He's never told anybody before. Only Scott knows, and he pinky-promised he would never tell. "It was the name of my mom's dad. And my middle name is _Allen_, for fucks sake."

"Xenophilius Allen Stilinski?" Erin asks, grabbing up her helmet. Stiles wore Alec's. "That's got a pretty shitty ring to it."

"I know, right?"

"Where did you come up with _Stiles_, then?"

Stiles grins. "You know the Teen Wolf movie, with Michael J. Fox?"

"Yeah, I've seen it a few times."

"Well, his name is Scott in the movie, and his best friends name is Stiles. That's where I chose it from, and it's stuck ever since. People used to call me Xeno, back before I changed it, and then all of our classmates changed and everybody forgot about it. I changed it back when I was seven, after all."

Erin frowns. "Did you change it because your…mom died?"

Stiles averts his eyes. "It's where it stemmed from, yeah, but it was also because it's downright embarrassing. My dad told me that coach Finstock—also my economics teacher—made fun of it back during conferences last year. He hasn't called it to my face, though, which is nice. I don't really like him."

"Yeah, I've got him last period. He's annoying."

Stiles nods, pulling on his own helmet. "Well, anyway, Alec's name has a pretty shitty ring to it, too, and _your_ initials spell 'ear', so let's not make fun of mine."

Erin smiles. "Would you change it, if you could?"

He smiles back. "No, probably not."

"But if you did?"

He huffs. "I like the name _Colton_."

Erin tilts her head a little. "What for?"

"I have no idea, but my initials would be Castiel's nickname."

"You mean that holy tax accountant from Supernatural?"

Stiles grins. "Yeah, that guy. Would you change your name?"

She smiles. "I don't think so. I like my name. It's fun."

"Would you change anything else?"

Erin tilts her head again. "What are you saying?"

Stiles huffs. "All I'm saying is that if history repeats itself, I'm totally getting a dinosaur!"

She laughs. "Where to, then?" she asks, ignoring him. "Your place or mine?"

"Well, my dad's home right now, so…"

"Mine?"

"Preferably."

"Do you want to watch some more movies or something?"

"Yeah, that sounds good."

**OoOoOoO**

_DEREK…_

Derek lets out a deep breath, staring down at where Stiles is passed out beside him, up on Cora's bed. He's been sleeping up here since he's the girl now, and Alec has taken his old one. Peter never got rid of them, for whatever reason. Derek's never thought about Stiles being any good at sex before, but…well, here he is, wondering how the fuck he could have three consecutive orgasms when Stiles probably doesn't even know what a clit _is_. Did he read up on it or something? That's totally something he would do.

_I know I want love_, he thinks, _but I have no idea what will make me happy. Emptiness doesn't know its own shape._

Stiles stirs at that, like Derek said it out loud, and then his eyes are blinking open, staring over at where Erin is lying beside him. The first thing he does is smile, and then says, "Waking up next to you is like when other people get to sleep in and keep dreaming."

And Derek's heart breaks a little bit, because now Stiles is going to start liking someone who doesn't exist. "Good morning yourself," he whispers.

He stretches, taking up most of the bed in the process. "So, how'd you become a werewolf, anyway? Peter, Derek, and Cora were born into it, Scott was attacked by Peter back at the very beginning of our sophomore year, Isaac was turned by Derek, and Aiden and Ethan were omegas for a while. What's your story?"

Derek decides he doesn't need another similarity to Derek by being a born wolf, so he lies: "I woke up in the woods covered in blood, which means I was either crazy or a werewolf, but I wasn't a nobody. I crawled back home and told Alec, and he became one because I went a little crazy on the next full moon, accidentally turning him. He was always so good at not killing people, but not me. That's why my eyes are blue. I accidentally killed a few people."

Stiles nods, rolling onto his stomach instead of where he is on his back. "Do you regret it? Killing people?"

"Not some people," Derek says softly.

Stiles nods again, but stays silent.

"Judge if you want," he says. "We are all going to die. I intend to deserve it."

Stiles snorts, scooting closer to him. "I wasn't judging you," he says, "I was thinking of all the people I would kill if _I_ had claws."

Derek smiles. "What do you want the most right now, Stiles?"

Stiles raises an eyebrow. "You sure you want to know that when we're both naked in your bed?"

He shrugs. "Why not?"

He sighs. "Derek, obviously. I hate trying to put my desire into words when my body knows exactly what to say… Come home."

Derek finds himself smiling. "How long have I known you for, Stiles?"

He shrugs. "Like, four days."

"What would you say if I was leaving in three more?"

He frowns. "You are?"

He nods. "I've got to. Alec and I both do. I'm sorry, but… I want you to treat the next three days like we're all we've got, alright? Tell me things you wouldn't tell me and invite me to do things you would never do. I still want to be the one that makes you happy and teaches you how to breathe, at least for a little while."

Stiles blinks at him for what seems like ages before a small, warm smile spreads across his face. "Alright," he says. "I feel like I haven't been living my life. I just want to do at least one illegal thing with you tonight—but can we sleep a little bit longer first?"

Derek snorts, giving a good natured eye roll. "Everyone you love will eventually die, but sure, go have another nap."

Stiles laughs, pulling them against each other. "I wish I could love you," he says, "and that you could stay at least a little bit longer so that I could tell you."

Derek smiles again, pretending that his heart isn't breaking some more. "Pretend you do."

He nods. "I will."

* * *

References: There are **16** references in this chapter:

**0.** "Promise me to think of us as a time so wonderful  
Promise me to think of us—still bright, still colorful  
Promise me to look back at us as a time in your life you enjoyed." Promise Me by Dead By April (song).

**1.** "Someone's gonna get it!" [he sings while swinging a baseball bat]. Alpner, though not the exact words. More just the scene.

**2.** "Good friends are like stars. You don't always have to see them, but you know that they're still there." Unknown.

**3.** "When life hands you lemons, take the lemons and be thankful you got anything." Asofterworld.

**4.** "If life hands you lemons, be cool. It's just the drugs." Asofterworld.

**5.** "A definition of friendship: Friendship is the comfort, the inexpressible comfort, of feeling safe with a person. Having neither to weigh thoughts nor to measure words, but to pour all of them out just as they are, chaff and grain together. Certain that a friendly, faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping and with a breath of comfort blow the rest away." JoAnn Barlean.

**6.** So I've got the link to it but wow this website hates links so you're gonna have bear (bare? ugh grammar) with me here: college humor .com [forward slash] article [forward slash] 6789158 [forward slash] what-youre-saying-with-your-drink-choice. Hopefully that works if you take out all the spaces and whatnot!  
Scotch: Look at how sophisticated and mysterious I am.  
Tequila shots: Please validate my coolness!  
Jaeger shots: I also need validation but tequila tastes grooooss.  
Vodka + coke: I'm just trying to get drunk.  
Vodka + energy drink: I'm just trying to get DRUNKER THAN ANYONE HAS EVER BEEN!  
Vodka + cranberry: I'm a girl.  
Light beer: I'm here to party.  
Fancy beer: Why am I even here?  
Whiskey: Wait, is whiskey any different from scotch?  
Bourbon: Honestly these all taste terrible and I can't tell the difference between them.  
Fancy cocktail: I'm interesting.  
Gin and tonic: I'm boring.  
Bloody Mary: I'm hungover.  
Coke: I'm taking one for the team by driving tonight  
Water: I'm only here because I'm fucking driving tonight.

**7.** Anti-Pickup lines that are just all over the place woohoo:  
Q. Could I buy you a drink?  
A. Actually, I'd rather have the money.  
Q. Haven't I seen you someplace before?  
A. Yes, that's why I don't go there anymore.  
Q. I think I could make you very happy.  
A. Why? Are you leaving?  
Q. Where have to been all my life' before we started dancing.  
A. Hiding from _you_.

**8.** "All I'm saying is that if history repeats itself, I'm totally getting a dinosaur!" Alpner.

**9.** "I know I want love, but I have no idea what will make me happy. Emptiness doesn't know its own shape." Asofterworld.

**10.** "Waking up next to you is like when other people get to sleep in and keep dreaming." Asofterworld.

**11.** "I woke up in the woods covered in blood, which means I am either crazy or a werewolf, but I'm not a nobody." Asofterworld.

**12.** "Judge if you want. We are all going to die. I intend to deserve it." Asofterworld.

**13.** I hate trying to put my desire into words when my body knows exactly what to say. Come home." Asofterworld.

**14.** "I feel like I haven't been living my life. I just want to do at least one illegal thing with you tonight." Asofterworld.

**15.** "Everyone you love will eventually die, but sure, go have another nap." Asofterworld.


	6. 5: A Long Distance Relationship

**5: A Long Distance Relationship**

Quick note: Stiles writes a poem in this chapter, and it's actually something that I wrote myself, but…it's really shitty okay? I wrote it like back in 8th grade. It's like the only love poem I could find that made any sense… I don't write them anymore! Seriously the last time I tried to write a love poem it turned into something about lying and darkness? Blargh whatever just know it's really shitty because it's old okay thanks bye

* * *

_I want to reconcile the violence in your heart  
I want to recognize your beauty's not just a mask  
I want to exorcise the demons in your past  
I want to satisfy the undisclosed desires in your heart_

_STILES…_

Stiles is an idiot. He is an idiot that is really, really bad at writing poetry. Also for thinking that calling one of his least favorite people in the entire world is actually going to help him… But Erin said to pretend that he loved her, and she's leaving in less than three days now. They did multiple illegal things last night… They scaled the side of a building still in construction, broke into a room at the local community college to draw pictures all over the whiteboard, and went a hundred miles an hour down the highway and managed to outrun a cop (that Stiles is pretty sure was his dad) Tron: Legacy style. She drives that bike like the god she was named after.

And now he's in his room, a sequence of numbers dialed into his phone. He pulls in a deep breath before pressing send.

"Hello, Jackson Whittemore speaking."

Stiles' eyes widen. "Wow, you don't sound like an asshole anymore!"

Jackson is silent for a second. "Please tell me this isn't Stilinski."

"This isn't Stilinski."

"_Why are you calling me_?"

Stiles sighs. "I, uh…need your help."

"You do realize that I still have a restraining order on you, right?"

"You call it a restraining order, I call it a long distance relationship."

"Oh my god, you're still an idiot. What do you want? I don't want to hear it if it has to do with Lydia."

"Ooh, I knew you still loved her."

"Of course I still love her. And now she's with that…" He snarls lightly. "I'm not talking to you about this. What do you want? I'm busy."

"Doing _what_?"

"Homework."

"Lame. I need your help with…um…a girl."

Jackson is silent again before bursting into laughter. "You're calling _me_ for dating advice?"

"Come on, you know my friends! They all suck at this stuff!"

"I don't give out dating advice to people who aren't as attractive as me. It's not easy for you people."

Stiles rolls his eyes. "Okay, so you're definitely still an asshole. I just…come on. I'll light Aiden's ass on fire the next time I see him."

Jackson huffs. "Deal. What do you need help with?"

"Um…poetry."

Jackson snorts. "You're not serious."

"A little not serious."

"Did you already write something?"

"Yeah, but it's really bad."

"I probably don't want to hear it, but read it anyway."

Stiles sighs. "Fine…

_Do you know that I love you?  
Love you more than my life?  
Do you know if I lost you I'd be lost in the night?_

Lost forever in darkness  
My shroud with no love.  
I would feel like I'm drowning in an ocean of blood.

Do you know that my feelings  
Just cycle 'round you?  
Do you know that we share all the same sort of views?

I hope that you know this  
I assume that you do  
Because if I am right, then two ones can be two.

That's it."

Another silence. "I find reading poetry really inspires me to not read poetry."

Stiles rolls his eyes. "I know it's bad. Can you help me make it better or not?"

"Um, no. It's way too bad for that. Why are you trying poetry, though? Girls only like that stuff _after_ you're dating. Writing people poetry before you know them well enough is creepy."

Stiles frowns. "Oh."

"Yeah, dumbass. What's her name and is she human?"

"Her name is Erin and she's a werewolf."

"Good, someone who knows how you really smell. What's she like?"

"Um…she's a senior like we are, with blonde hair, eyes the color of Mars, about the size of Lyd—"

"Personality, Stilinski. Her looks aren't going to help in getting her to like you back—especially you."

"God, you are such a dick. She's like…um…" Stiles frowns. Derek. She's like Derek. "She's like Derek."

"Derek Hale?"

"Right. That's why I started to like her."

"You liked Derek…?"

"I still like Derek, but he's gone, so…whatever, it's complicated and I'm bisexual. Deal with it." He huffs. "What do I do?"

"Don't ever write poetry for her. Ever. She would rip your throat out with her teeth just like that alpha would."

"He's not an alpha anymore."

"Wait, really?" He lets out a short laugh. "That explains why I've felt so free lately! Great. Anyway, yeah, no poetry. Derek would look at poetry and then use it as kindling for a fire. You're just gonna have to come straight out with something to that girl. Suggest a date. If she rejects you it's a no go and you can wait another week before trying again, but if she says yes then just try not to talk at all. You're annoying, not to mention that sarcasm tends to scare some people off. Especially blunt people, and Derek was pretty damn blunt."

"Well, it's not really the first time I'm talking to her, I just…" He sighs. "We've already had sex twice."

Stiles can _hear_ Jackson's jaw drop. "_You_ lost your virginity before you turned eighteen?"

Stiles rolls his eyes. "Yes, I did, woot woot. Let's just say that it's a friends with benefits, though, okay? I need to figure out a way to tell her that I _actually_ like her."

"Something like that you're just going to have to tell her outright, dude."

Stiles sighs. "I was afraid of that."

"Then don't ask her out yet. Nobody likes someone without any confidence."

"Should I make—"

"_Don't make cards_. And don't ask McCall to stand behind her and hold up queue cards. That's a turn-off, too. And don't memorize a speech, because if you like her then you're going to be too busy staring at her face and you'll forget everything you planned and just stutter a lot."

Stiles _hmphs_. "Fine, I'll just wing the damn thing."

"That's the spirit. Can I go now?"

Stiles rolls his eyes. He didn't help him at _all_ except that he saved him from an embarrassing poetry reading. "One more thing."

"What?"

"Should I use matches or a lighter?"

Jackson chuckles. "Do you have a blow torch?"

"Sadly, no, but I could get Peter to help me push him into a fire pit."

"Do it. And get pictures if you can."

"Deal. You can go now."

"Thank god."

He hangs up without a goodbye, but that's okay. Stiles can do this. He can ask a girl out like any normal person would. Not well, but he can do it.

When he finally shows up at Erin's place after school, though, he's greeted with only Peter.

"Erin's not here," he says. "I don't know where she went, either."

Stiles huffs. "Can I just…sit here and wait, then?"

Peter raises an eyebrow. "The last time we spend time alone together you started screaming about salt and then threw a pie into my face."

Stiles shrugs. "You deserved it."

Peter nods. "Touché. Pick a seat, any seat. There's probably something good on TV, too, if you want."

Stiles nods, dropping onto the couch. He hopes he won't be here too long… He'll lose his nerve.

**OoOoOoO**

_DEREK…_

Derek frowns when he walks into Stiles' room and finds it empty. He thought he was here, coming home after school. He could have sworn that's where Scott said he was, anyway.

He's about to walk back out (the sheriff isn't home) when he notices something sticking out from under Stiles' bed, though, and his jaw actually drops a little.

"No way," he says, reaching down to tug at the sleeve of a shirt that he knows is his. It's the grey long sleeve way back from Stiles' sophomore year that Stiles made him change out of because it had blood on it and Danny was over. Derek never got it back, and Stiles apparently never got rid of it.

When he tries to tug it out, though it doesn't come easy, so he kneels down to the floor to look under the bed and see what's blocking it. It's a giant, clear plastic tub, filled to the brim with what looks like notebooks. Derek pulls it out so he can get his shirt, and against his better judgment he pulls the lid off.

They're all composition notebooks, and he's hit with a very strong sense of the Butterfly Effect. But Stiles isn't crazy, and he's never had a black out even once. There was that time that he passed out when Scott got that human tattoo, but that's different.

Derek pulls out the one on the far left to see that it's got Stiles' name written across the front in childlike handwriting, and upon opening it he realizes with a start that it's because it _is_ the handwriting of a child. They're journals. Stiles has literally written "Dear Journal" at the top of every single entry and then signed it with his full name and the date.

Derek frowns, looking closer at the beginning signatures. He shakes his head, turning more of the pages. He doesn't start really reading until the third notebook on, but he realizes with a frown that his mother isn't mentioned at all. He knows that Claudia died when Stiles was seven, so he quick jumps back to the first book and checks the very first entry:

_dear journal,  
hi. im Xenophilius, but my daddy calls me Xeno. im gonna call you journal. mr. Daniels (that's my doctor. daddy calls him my therapist) told me that he wants me to start writing in you so that he can read them later and know how im doing. he wants me to write everything that im thinking.  
my mommy died 3 days ago and i dont feel very good at all. daddy doesnt have to go to work right now so we stay home and sit on the couch a lot. sometimes we forget to make lunch but he always lets me have as much ice cream as i want. i don want any ice cream, i just want my mom.  
—Xenophilius Allen Stilinski  
November 3, 2003  
_  
Derek swallows tightly. Stiles' mom died on Halloween? That's rough. He turns the page to the next entry:

_dear journal,_

_mr. Daniels told me that im allowed to call him Jeff because we're friends now. he told me that i should also talk about stuff that i like and what i look like, becuz he wants to know how i see myself. im 7 and 3/4 but im gonna turn 8 on February 4 which is exactly 3 months away. my hair is brown and daddy says i should get a haircut but i dont want to. my eyes match and i have more moles than I can count. mommy used to tell me that every mole is a kiss from an angel but Jeff told me that thats actually freckles and moles are kisses from angels who havent gotten their wings yet. i dont have any freckles,so there must be a lot of angels without wings. i found one that i havent seen before on the left side of my chest so it must be a kiss from mommy.  
my favret color used to be red but mommys doctors told me that blood is red, so then it was gonna be blue but blood is blue too, and i cant like brown or green because that's whats covering mommy, so im gonna start liking white because daisies and clouds and angels are white.  
mommy used to tell me that she likes to let go of things that dont need help anymore. and she said that no matter how long it takes we have to let go of it some day. maybe __we all have to let go some day but just for today i want to hold on.__  
—Xenophilius Allen Stilinski  
November 4, 2003  
_  
The next entry is shorter:

_dear journal,  
daddy stopped bying ice cream becuz I told him that it reminded me of the way that mommy used to eat it from the carton while watching sad movies with too much kissing  
—Xenophilius Allen Stilinski  
November 7, 2003  
_  
Derek slams it shut and shoves it away, jumping up to the second to last one in the bin instead. He recognizes Stiles' handwriting now, except that it's just "Stiles" written across the front instead of "Xenophilius Allen Stilinski". He glances down to see that the first date is two months before they met each other, so he flips forward until he comes to none other than Stiles' exact feelings the very second he saw Derek in person, standing in the forest while he was with Scott:

_Yo,  
Scott and I ran into Derek Hale while searching for his inhaler. The guy just growled something about "private property" and then tossed it out from his pocket. What does he do, comb the entire forest for litter every day? The guy screams "fucking creepy" like a beacon. Haha. Geddit? I'm hilarious. Anyway, we still haven't found the body. Maybe Hale knows? He probably knows. Anyone who still chooses to live in a house where his entire family was burnt to death inside of probably knows everything about murder ever. I mean…poor guy, but geez, move out of your mom's basement already._

—_Stiles, September 4, 2011  
_  
Derek frowns. He knew that Stiles didn't used to like him, but wow. When did he start to like him, then? How long did it take…? Derek finds a lot of things in this and the last two, but they never once say that he thinks that he's fallen in love. It just starts to talk about him more and more, and about how attractive Derek is and about how oblivious he is to literally everything. And it's the very last entry that Derek finds out exactly where Stiles truly broke:

_Dear Derek,  
__I wonder what kind of person I would be if I didn't worry so much about what kind of person you wanted.__ Everyone you've ever loved and you never looked at me twice—or at least not in the way that I wanted. Or maybe you did and you just never told me. I'd like to think that you would have, but I never did, did I? Why would you be any different? __You're never going to say what I want to hear__ because __we're all too scared to say the things worth saying.__ And __every now and then I fall apart__ because that's the only thing that ever comes to my head. That you could have loved me like I loved you and we never did anything about it… You left before we could. Where __were you when I needed you the most__, Derek? The darkness hit like a ton of bricks the moment that you zipped up your last bag of things. __Ever since you've been away I'm just a face in the crowd__… __You don't know, do you? That in a crowded place, my eyes will search for you.__ But I know that you're not there. You're never there and you're never going to be._

_I wish I'd never met you so I could meet you again__, long before all of this started. Maybe I could have changed Scott's life and he never would have had to get the bite at all. You would have pushed me away and I would have let you, and you would have made sure that there was never a body at all so you could protect the names that you know. I have dreams about you, you know? That you're still around. __Through your bedroom window you look so sad at night, and I imagine that I am what you need, but realizes that's crazy__. Even in my dreams I don't get to tell you. I know you've been lonely, Derek. I know that you think about death. I can see it in your cold, green eyes and the way that you only smile when something goes wrong for the other guys._

_I don't even know anything about death, except I feel certain that I'll get to try again. Game over. Continue? I know that's not what happens in real life, but I know all sorts of things I don't believe. __I have done up a list of pros and cons for suicide and both sides are equally full of bullshit.__ I'm not going to kill myself over you. If I did I would do it because of you and Lydia and my mom and for every other dead person that I know. Do you know how many people that is? My mom, Allison's mom, Matt, Erica, Heather, Ennis, my chemistry teacher, Boyd, Kali, and your most recent ex-lover… That's ten people, and that's just the people that I met before they died. There were the other sacrifices, and your family, and the Argent's before… I probably wouldn't even count them all. If I killed myself I would do it for the darkness. I think I already had some darkness in me before I died with Scott and Allison. I've always been drawn to monsters. Lydia the banshee, my best friend the werewolf, you the werewolf… But __even monsters are welcome when your home feels empty__, right?_

_I love you, Derek, and now you're gone. I love you, I love you, I love you. I heard that __if you repeat a word again and again it loses its meaning. Apparently this also works for heartbreak.__ Are you broken yet?_

_I love you.  
—Stiles, February 14, 2013_

Derek's entire heart shatters. That's the last thing that Stiles wrote. It's been _months_ and he hasn't written a single thing since Derek left. His mother's death started them, and Derek's leaving ended them.

Derek pulls his phone out of his pocket with shaking hands, realizing that there are tears spilling from his eyes when they drop over the screen.

"Sup, bro?" Cora's answers.

Derek sniffs in deep. "Cora?" he chokes out.

"Oh my god, you haven't cried since Boyd. What happened?"

"I fell in love."

She's silent for a moment. "Do you—"

"We have to change back," he says, wiping his eyes and totally smearing the make-up that Cora put on him this morning. "We _need_ to."

"I'm not at home and Peter has the potions still. Can you meet me back there?"

Derek is already shoving all of the books away, making sure it all looks untouched. "Ten minutes."

"Okay, meet me down at the bottom. I'll text Peter that we're on our way so that he can have it all ready for us."

Derek nods, vision still blurry. "Yeah, alright."

After he shoves the box and shirt back underneath the bed he pulls in a very, very deep breath before standing. Stiles loves him, and now Derek realizes that he loves him back. It's going to hurt to tell him that it's been him the entire time, but he needs to know. Derek wants to be in a love that's true, after all. And, if you want something that you've never had, you've got to do something that you've never done.

* * *

References: There are **18** references in this chapter:

**0.** "I want to reconcile the violence in your heart  
I want to recognize your beauty's not just a mask  
I want to exorcise the demons in your past  
I want to satisfy the undisclosed desires in your heart." Undisclosed Desires by Muse (song).

**1.** "You call it a restraining order, I call it a long distance relationship." Alpner.

**2.** "I find reading poetry really inspires me to not read poetry." Alpner.

**3.** "We all have to let go some day, but just for today, I want to hold on." Unknown.

**4.** "I wonder what kind of person I would be if I didn't worry so much about what kind of person you wanted." Asofterworld.

**5.** "You're never going to say what I want to hear." Unknown.

**6.** "We're all too scared to say the things worth saying." Unknown.

**7.** "Every now and then I fall apart." Unknown.

**8.** "Where were you when I needed you the most?" Unknown.

**9.** "Since you've been away I'm just a face in the crowd." Coming Back Down by Hollywood Undead (song).

**10.** "You don't know, do you? That in a crowded place, my eyes will search for you." Unknown.

**11.** "I wish I'd never met you so I could meet you again." Asofterworld.

**12.** "Through your bedroom window you look so sad at night, and I imagine that I am what you need, but realizes that's crazy." Asofterworld.

**13.** "I don't even know anything about death, except I feel certain that I'll get to try again. Game over. Continue? I know that's not what happens in real life, but I know all sorts of things I don't believe." Asofterworld.

**14.** "I have done up a list of pros and cons for suicide and both sides are equally full of bullshit." Asofterworld.

**15.** "Even monsters are welcome when your home feels empty." Asofterworld.

**16.** "If you repeat a word again and again it loses its meaning. Apparently this also works for heartbreak." Asofterworld.

**17.** "If you want something that you've never had, you've got to do something that you've never done." Unknown.


	7. 6: Stay Out of This

**6: Stay Out of This**

_And I'd give forever to touch you  
'Cause I know that you feel me somehow  
You're the closest to heaven that I'll ever be  
And I don't want to go home right now_

_And all I can taste is this moment_  
_And all I can breathe is your life_  
_And sooner or later it's over_  
_I just don't want to miss you tonight_

_STILES…._

Stiles practically has a heart attack when the door is practically wrenched open, eyes wide at the way that Erin and Alec both burst in. They start to make their way towards Peter's bedroom, but both of them stop dead when they see Stiles there.

"Stiles," Erin says breathlessly. "You're here. Why are you here?"

Stiles frowns, standing up. "I was waiting for you."

"Now isn't a good time," Alec says, beginning to usher Erin towards Peter's bedroom again. "Can you come back in, like, half an hour?"

Stiles is about to ask what's going on, but Erin speaks first: "No, Cora, this is perfect."

Stiles frowns. "Cora?"

Alec shushes him. "Don't tell him yet!" he hisses, shoving Erin towards Peter's bedroom again.

Stiles glares a little. "Don't do that."

"Oh, shut up," he snaps. "You don't know anything about us, Stiles. Come back in half an hour."

"No!" Erin yells, shoving him away again. "I want to tell him _now_!"

"Don't tell him at _all_, you idiot!" Alec growls. "You're going to break him!"

"You're going to tell Isaac, though!"

"So? He's not in love with me yet!"

"HEY!" Stiles yells. "What the hell is going _on_?"

Erin opens her mouth to say something, but Alec literally dive-tackles her at that point, slamming her to the ground with a snarl. Erin fights back, both of them breaking into a scuffle that knocks over three chairs and the entire table. Peter finally comes out at that, raising an eyebrow at the way that the two werewolves are rolling around in their beta forms.

"You two are terrible," he says.

Stiles frowns, looking at the bubbling purple goop he's holding in two glasses. "What the hell is that?"

"A potion," Peter says, side-stepping the way that they're slowly stopping their fight now that Peter has shown up. "It's supposed to turn them back."

"Turn them back from _what_?"

"_FINE_!" Alec snaps, jumping away from Erin, slashes healing on the way. "Fucking tell him, but I'm not responsible for anything that happens." She grabs one of the glasses from Peter and stomps up the spiral staircase, closing herself in Erin's room.

"What's going on, Erin?" Stiles asks, sitting back down on the couch. "What the hell are you turning back into?"

Erin sighs, sitting down on the far side of the couch while Peter sits between them, handing her the other glass. "My name isn't Erin, Stiles, and my initials don't spell out 'ear'."

Stiles frowns. "You…what? What is it, then?"

She swallows tightly. "My name is Derek."

Stiles raises an eyebrow. "Are you taking drugs or something? I know those don't affect werewolves like they do humans, but you still shouldn't—"

"I _am_ Derek, Stiles!" she yells. "I'm Derek fucking hale, and Alec is Cora, and Peter is our uncle, not just some random guy we found off the streets. Why do you think we're so damn similar? It's because we're the _same person_!"

Stiles blinks for a few seconds, feeling the way his heart is beginning to speed up. "That's not possible," he says. "You always ask me questions about what things are going on. Why would you ask them when you already know them?"

"To pretend he doesn't, stupid," Peter says.

Erin snarls at him. "You stay out of this," she hisses. She looks back at Stiles. "It was Cora's idea, okay? She wanted to play a prank on all of you. It was only supposed to last for a week and it was _never_ supposed to turn into this."

Stiles narrows his eyes. "If you're really Derek then why the fuck are you a girl?"

Erin huffs. "Witches followed us out of here and changed us. It took us two months to get rid of them, and that's when we came back. They blasted us with magic and Cora got me to agree to this shit fest."

Stiles un-narrows his eyes, but his eyebrows are still knit together in skepticisms. "I don't believe you," he says. "Tell me something only Derek and I would know?"

Erin huffs. "I learned to pick locks to get at your heart," she says softly, "but failed. I got into your house, though. I found all of your notebooks and I…" She swallows tightly. "I don't know why I stayed in that house either, okay? It was the last thing that I had left of them. Peter was still in a coma and I still thought that Cora was dead. I slammed your head against your steering wheel on the night that we found out Peter was the alpha, remember? And you had to miss your lacrosse game? And you—"

Stiles' ears stop working. A boiling, raging wind rushes up and cuts off anything that he can hear at all, and his heart beats so fast that Stiles can barely breathe. She's telling the truth. Erin is Derek. Erin is… _He read his journals_. He probably read that last letter where he… He starts choking a little bit, bending over so he can try and get the air out of his throat.

He's having a panic attack. He's having a panic attack.

But then Derek is jumping over and patting him on the back, and just like that, Stiles snaps up, completely out of. "Get _away_ from me!" he spits, jumping up. "Don't fucking _touch_ me! You let me tell you _everything_! You mother_fucker_!" He's screaming now. He doesn't care. "You just let me tell you why I'm in love with you and how much it hurt when you didn't say goodbye and…and… OH MY GOD, you are an _asshole_! You couldn't have told at least _me_? You couldn't have whispered it into my ear all of those times we were alone and I was _pouring my heart out to you_?!"

Derek looks…a lot of things. Sad, sorry, and scared are the ones that Stiles sees the most. Stiles doesn't know why he's scared. "Stiles, I'm sorry, it was Cora's—"

"No, fuck Cora! You agreed to it and you came back here and you still could have told me! I'm going to have to start taking _pills_ because of you! No _wonder_ you were so much like him, you _are_ him! ARGH!"

Derek winces when Stiles breaks the nearest lamp. It's childish, but he doesn't feel bad.

"Nothing can chance the way I feel about you," Stiles continues to spit, "but I wish it could. Obviously true friends stab you in the front. I guess this is exactly what I get when I trust someone—it gets thrown back in my face. Why did you decide to tell me _now_, Derek? Your week isn't over yet."

Derek swallows tightly. "By reading that entry to me, Stiles, I realized that I loved you, too."

Stiles' heart actually skips a beat, but it's not a good feeling. It hurts. It hurts like _shit_.

"We are terrible for each other," Derek continues, "and, yes, we are a disaster. But tell me your heart doesn't race for a hurricane or a burning building. I'd rather die terrified than live forever."

Stiles glares at him, trying to build up the strength in his legs to run out of here. "It doesn't," he grinds out.

Derek shakes his head. "I don't believe you."

"Know what, Derek? I think the world would be a nicer place if we stopped pretending we knew everything about everyone."

Derek stands at that, eyes blazing blue. "Is that what you would have wanted, Stiles? You would have wanted me to leave at the end of the seven days like I said I would and then have Derek just come _miraculously_ to you, spouting off how much he realized he loves you and that he never should have left? Because I only realized I did _because_ of this, and if I hadn't of done all of it I might have just stayed away for ever. And you would have stayed in the darkness all by your lonesome and started taking those pills! Is that what you wish had happened, Stiles? Look me in the eyes and _tell me that's what you wanted to have happened_."

Stiles stares Derek dead in the eyes, but that's not what he says. "I wanted this," he says. It comes out in a choke, and Stiles realizes that he's got tears threatening to spill over. "You came back and you fell in love with me. All of my dreams came true, I just didn't think them through like _this_. You were _supposed_ to call me and tell me you were coming home, not _have sex with me_. What the fuck is wrong with you? You let me believe that somebody new actually cared about me, but instead it's the person I've always wanted to care about me in the first place! How could you _do_ that?!"

"I didn't mean to!" Derek yells back. "It all happened so fast, okay? Just _boom_ you're telling me that you're in love with Peter's nephew and _boom_ you're depressed and you _cut yourself_, Stiles! I almost told you then, but Cora would have killed me, so I dressed up like a dead president instead! It made you laugh, didn't it? At least for a split second you were _happy_!"

"I would have been happier if you had just told me, you idiot!" he yells. "We hadn't had sex by then!"

"Well it was good, wasn't it?" he snarls.

"Yeah, so what?" Stiles snarls back, though not quite as intimidating since he's just a human. "It almost made me feel worse because I thought I was hurting you, but it turns out _you_ were just the one hurting _me_!"

Derek winces at that.

"Were you happy where you were, Derek?" Stiles asks. "You said you wanted to make me happy. You seem like you were happy without me. Maybe I would be happy without me, too. You never would have made me happy, Derek," his voice coming out in spits again. "Not truly, beautifully happy. Being completely responsible for somebody else's feelings is impossible. So what are you going to do now? Because I'm just going to walk away. I'm going to walk out of this fucking place and I never want to see you again."

Derek recoils like Stiles just slapped him. Good. Stiles wants to. "But you said your feelings didn't change for me," he whispers.

"I also said that I wish they did," he snaps. "I'd rather you break my heart with the truth than break it with a lie, you asshole."

Derek swallows tightly. "Feelings buried alive never die, Stiles."

"And that's the problem" he spits. "When you're alive, people can hurt you. It's easier to crawl into a bone cage or a snowdrift of confusion. It's easier to lock everybody out. Love is a lot like death, Derek. It chooses you."

Stiles can see the way that Derek's heart breaks a little. "Stiles, please, just let me—"

"Let you _what_? I don't want you to fix it, Derek. I want to be _alone_."

And with that, he turns around and walks out.

**OoOoOoO**

_DEREK…_

Derek stares after Stiles, every inch of his body twitching. He wants to go after him, but…he honestly feels that Stiles doesn't want him to. He feels that Stiles wants to be alone, at least to collect his thoughts. Stiles loves him. He wouldn't really leave, would he? Because Derek isn't leaving again. He belongs in Beacon Hills. He knows that now.

He's the person that leaves and realizes they never should have left.

"Ah yes," Peter says, still sitting there on the couch. "These violent delights have violent ends, it seems."

"I told you," Cora says, coming down the stairs, back in her real body. "The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple. You should have just come back and told him you realized you were in love with him when you noticed how much you missed him or something. Now his heart is broken _again_."

"Yeah," a new voice says. "Way to go."

Derek whips around to glare at Isaac, leaning in the doorway. "When did _you_ find out?" she snarls.

"Cora told me a couple of days ago," he says, walking in. "You should have done the same, at least for his sake."

Derek gives an aggravated sigh. "So I'm an idiotic, cool. Give me that." He grabs the glass out of Peter's hand and drinks the entire thing.

The change is entirely painless, and Derek honestly barely feels it at all. He's just suddenly taller and bigger and—

"Maybe you should have changed first," Isaac says with a little smirk.

Derek huffs, going over to where Cora kept his suitcases full of things and just changing there in front of everybody. "I need to go after him," he says frantically.

"Are you sure that's wise?" Peter asks. "He sort of told you to fuck off forever."

Derek glares at him. "Jackson told that to Lydia, too, but then she saved his life."

Cora shrugs. "Go figure."

Derek sighs, moving towards the door. "I just…I need him to know that, no matter what happens tonight, I love him more than anything ever."

"Whoa there, tiger," Peter says, flitting up to block him with the werewolf speed he rarely uses. "You better think through what you're going to say first unless you just want to hurt him more."

Derek bites his bottom lip. He never does that, he just needs to keep himself from saying stupid things. "I've already hurt him, I really doubt I can make it worse."

Peter sighs, and it's kind of terrifying, because it's one of those old, fatherly sighs that he used to give Derek when they used to spend all of their time together after Derek's father died. "There isn't a word for the things I will do to the people who wronged me. I have so much rage. Stiles is the same way as I am, Derek, he's just never had anything to take it out on. You can see it in his eyes, the way he wants to maim something. But he's just a human, Derek, and he's stuck without claws and fangs and the strength that he wants to protect the people that he loves like we can."

Derek frowns a little bit. "Are you saying that I should give him the bite?"

All three of Peter, Cora, and Isaac burst into laughter.

"No!" Peter says, still laughing slightly. "Stiles would be the worst werewolf ever!"

"No way," Isaac says, wiping a tear away. "He'd be the best. He'd be terrifying. Can you imagine if he _did_ have claws to protect us? Unlike Derek he would actually win some fights."

Derek rolls his eyes, moving passed Peter. "Forget it, I'll just wing it."

"Careful," Cora calls after him, but she's grinning still, so Derek ignores it.

**OoOoOoO**

_STILES…_

Stiles didn't actually make it out of the building. He's back up on the roof, sitting on the edge again. He's still not going to kill himself. He's not giving up now. He just needs a very, very long breather. So much for being _taught_ how to breathe…

"Don't yell at me."

Stiles turns around slowly, too emotionally drained to care too much that Derek actually managed to find him within twenty minutes of his storming out. He's back in his old body, now. The purple goop must have changed him back. "I'm too tired to yell at you," he says. "How did you find me?"

"I sniffed you out," he says, tapping his nose.

Stiles nods, looking away.

"What, no dog jokes?"

Stiles looks down at the people below him. "How about you shit on the grass instead of my heart, Fido."

Derek sighs, sitting down a good foot away from him. "I had that coming."

"Yeah, you did."

"I really do love you, Stiles."

"Yeah, I know." Stiles looks up at the sky. "You would have finished the week as Erin otherwise. I can't believe you read my old journals."

Derek gives an apologetic sigh. "I didn't know what they were until I had already some of the entries. Did you really keep them going for ten whole years of your life?"

"Yup," Stiles says, setting his hands on either side of him. "That's why there are so many."

"You really hated me when you first met me."

"Yup," he says again.

Derek sighs. "Can I ask you something?"

"Sure."

"You told Erin why you love me now, but…why did you fall in love with me in the first place?"

Stiles looks over at him at that, face expressionless. "I don't remember why," he says. "One day I just…_did_."

"Not even a guess?"

Stiles looks away, straight out across from him. "I've tried to pinpoint it before, Derek, and I've never been able to. I'm sorry."

He nods, looking out as well. "That's okay, I don't need to know."

Stiles swallows tightly, watching with his peripheral vision as Derek sets his hands on either side of himself as well. They just sit in silence for a long while, staring out at the things around and below them.

"Stiles?" Derek says at length.

Stiles looks over at him. "Hmm?"

Derek just stares at him for a few seconds before actually saying anything. "I was curious. I wanted to know things that I knew you wouldn't have told me. I'm sorry. I know the things I learned were helpful, but if I could do it over I wouldn't. You asked me if I could change anything else, and this is the thing that I would change. The way that I lied to you and let you believe things that I never should have. _I'm sorry_."

Stiles blinks at him for a few moments before smiling. "Yeah, alright," he says. "I forgive you."

Derek smiles back. It's toothless, but it's warm and it's perfect and Stiles remembers when he fell in love with Derek's smile in the first place.

"I love you," Stiles says.

Derek's smile widens up to his eyes, showing those stupid, perfect, beautiful teeth, and _that's_ the smile that Stiles has kept himself going with. "Xenophilius Allen Stilinski, I'll love you till the day I die."

Stiles swings one leg over to the safe side of the edge and leans across the open space between them without hesitation, kissing him hard. Derek wraps his arms so tightly around Stiles' waist that he can barely breathe, but this isn't like before. This is exactly how he wants it. He wraps his arms around Derek's neck, gripping the fabric at the back of his long sleeve shirt with one hand and pushing his fingers into Derek's hair with the other. He never wants to let go. He wants Derek to hold onto him forever and—"

"_Xenophilius Allen_?!" a stunned voice sputters around laughter.

Stiles and Derek pull just far enough away that the can look over at the door, glaring at where Cora, Isaac, and Peter are all bent over laughing at them.

"What the fuck?" Stiles says. "Go away!"

"You two are _so_ cute together," Peter says, and about then is when Stiles realizes that he's holding up a video camera.

"Oh my god," he groans, leaning forward to lean against Derek. "He's taping us."

"How much of that did you _get_?" Derek growls at him.

"All of it," Isaac says, grinning. "We all snuck out here, like, the second you walked out. You were too focused on sniffing Stiles out that you didn't notice us."

Derek huffs, resting his own head against Stiles' shoulder. "And he's still taping," he mutters.

"We're going to roll it at your wedding!" Cora says, grinning evilly. She's back in her real body, too.

Stiles blushes furiously at the idea of a wedding, making sure that Derek doesn't see his face.

"Ooh, Derek is blushing!" Isaac yells.

Stiles snaps his head up, looking at Derek's face. He is blushing. They're both blushing.

"We're pathetic," Stiles says, grinning.

Derek grins back. "A little bit."

He kisses Stiles again, both of them ignoring the cat calls and way that Peter is walking closer to them to get a closer picture.

"At least get off of the ledge," Cora says, smacking the back of Derek's head.

They roll onto it, landing on all of their shoes.

They laugh again, jumping back.

"Alright, alright," Peter says, closing the camera. "We'll leave you alone. You might want to expect a call from Scott, though."

Stiles pulls away to glare up at him, but Derek pulls him back down before he can say anything. And that's okay with him, because he never wants to let go of this. Everyone says that love hurts, but that is not true. Loneliness hurts; rejection hurts; losing someone hurts. Everyone confuses these things with love, but in reality, love is the only thing in the world that covers up all the pain and makes people feel wonderful again. Love is magnificent… Love and care for your partner and those feelings of wanting and knowing you're wanted makes your heart want to thump.

And Stiles almost expected it to end, like he was going to wake up from falling asleep on Scott's bed in the middle of doing his essay and that's why he didn't ever finish it, and Isaac and Allison would be there poking him and drawing penises on his forehead or something.

But it doesn't end, because this is love, and love doesn't _have_ an ending.

* * *

References: There are **22** references in this chapter:

**0.** "And I'd give forever to touch you  
'Cause I know that you feel me somehow  
You're the closest to heaven that I'll ever be  
And I don't want to go home right now.

And all I can taste is this moment  
And all I can breathe is your life  
And sooner or later it's over  
I just don't want to miss you tonight." Iris by the Goo Goo Dolls.

**1.** "You stay out of this." Aladdin (movie).  
**  
2.** "I learned to pick locks to get at your heart but failed. I got into your house, though." Asofterworld.

**3.** "Nothing can change the way I feel about you. I wish it could!" Asfoterworld.

**4.** "True friends stab you in the front." Oscar Wilde.

**5.** "This is exactly what I get when I trust someone—it gets thrown back in my face." By Spencer Reid from the Criminal Minds show, S1E10.

**6.** "We are terrible for each other, and, yes, we are a disaster. But tell me your heart doesn't race for a hurricane or a burning building. I'd rather die terrified than live forever." Asofterworld.

**7.** "I think the world would be a nicer place if we stopped pretending we knew everything about everyone." m. k., whoever the fuck that is.

**8.** " All of my dreams came true, I just didn't think them through." Asofterworld.

**9.** You seem happy without me. Maybe I would be happy without me, too." Asofterworld.

**10.** "Being completely responsible for somebody else's feelings is impossible." Unknown.

**11.** "Feelings buried alive never die." Karol K. Truman

**12.** "And that's the problem. When you're alive, people can hurt you. It's easier to crawl into a bone cage or a snowdrift of confusion. It's easier to lock everybody out." Wintergirls by Laurie Anderson (book).

**13.** Love is a lot like death It chooses you." _Ethereal_, book 1 in the _Celestra_ series by Addison Moore.

**14.** "These violent delights have violent ends." William Shakespeare

**15.** "The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple." Oscar Wilde

**16.** "I need you to know, no matter what happens tonight, I love you more than anything ever." Arika Tolle.

**17.** "There isn't a word for the things I will do to the people who wronged me. I have so much rage." Asofterworld.

**18.** "I'll love you till the day I die." It's A Wonderful Life (movie).

**19.** Everyone says that love hurts, but that is not true. Loneliness hurts; rejection hurts; losing someone hurts. Everyone confuses these things with love, but in reality, love is the only thing in the world that covers up all the pain and makes us feel wonderful again." Unknown.

**20.** "Love is magnificent… Love and care for your partner and those feelings of wanting and knowing you're wanted makes your heart want to thump." 33 a gay love story by JJ South (yes that is a book title I found it on my Kindle okay).

**21.** "Love doesn't _have_ an ending." Unknown.


	8. Epilogue:

**Epilogue: Live the Longest**

_The serious stuff and the light-hearted  
I look in your eyes and I'm just getting started  
Tell me your secrets, all your hopes and wishes too  
I want to know everything there is to know about you_

_STILES  
Stiles' 18th Birthday…_

"I can't believe all of these people are skipping school for me," Stiles says, grinning at Scott.

It's the whole gang over at the Stilinski's, ready to celebrate Stiles' eighteenth birthday. It's a Tuesday, so they're all skipping school and taking the day off at work. Derek, Peter, Melissa, Chris, Deaton, and Marin are all drinking beers in the kitchen, Stiles' dad (Patrick) is making sure that the present stack doesn't fall over, Stiles and Scott are sitting just on the couch, there's a Sorry! game going on that includes Cora, Isaac, Danny, and Aiden, Ethan is sitting behind Danny being supportive, and Allison is curled up at Stiles feet while somehow reading a book over all the noise. Lydia hasn't shown up yet, but Aiden says that she's on her way. Something about a big present? Stiles is excited.

"Of course we are!" Scott says brightly. "It's your _eighteenth_! You know, statistics have shown that those who have the most birthdays live the longest."

Stiles rolls his eyes. "I don't have birthdays. I level up."

"Yeah, well, I had no idea you were on one of the lowest levels out of all of our friends. You're practically as tall as Derek is!"

Stiles laughs. "Yeah, which is handy."

Scott wiggles his eyebrows. "Does your dad know yet?"

Stiles snorts. "No way, he'd have a heart attack. Derek is nine years older than I am."

"But you're eighteen now! It's not illegal anymore!"

Stiles is about to tell Scott to keep his voice lower, but suddenly the doorbell rings, so he flips over the back of the couch to go open the door to—"Lydia!" he says brightly, and she's carrying the biggest, brightest present that Stiles has ever seen.

"Surprise!" she says. "I brought you something as big as you brought me."

Stiles realizes that she's making fun of him. "You are literally the worse," he says, but he's smiling anyway. "Here, it won't fit through like that, you've got to turn it on its side."

As they get it through, Patrick pops up, ready to take it. "Wow!" he says as it's set down in front of him. "You've really gone all out, Lydia." He smiles. "Oh, Lydia! I haven't seen you some time. How've you been?"

Lydia gives a dramatic sigh. "You have _no_ idea. My parents are trying to get back together, so there's been a _huge_ moving and space issue, and my dad keeps trying to tell me that I'm not allowed to have Aiden over as late as I want to, but…" She goes on for at least two minutes. Stiles stops listening after a while, but she's talking to him too, so he can't just…sneak away. Eventually she huffs and walks off, moving over to where Aiden is currently snarling at his brothers boyfriend for whatever he's just done in the game.

"Wow," Patrick says again, staring after her. "If I stop asking people how they're doing, maybe they'll stop telling me."

Stiles laughs, walking away so he can fend for himself with the giant present. He hasn't gotten a kiss from Derek all day and he needs one. It's his birthday; he can do what he wants.

As he walks into the kitchen, he overhears just enough of the current conversation among the adults (excluding his father) to know that it's about how difficult Melissa's job is going with so many weird injuries lately. The weird creatures all coming for the darkness haven't been very bad lately; Stiles is hoping it will stop altogether pretty soon. Sometimes his own darkness still hurts, but Derek is always there to shoo it away.

"When work seems overwhelming," Peter says with a warm smile, "remember that you're going to die."

Everyone blinks at him, but Melissa plasters one of those "_I am so done with you_" stares on. "Says the man who _came back from the dead_," she says.

Stiles pulls Derek off while everyone is distracted by their own laughter, Derek going easily.

"What's up?" he says when they get up to the top of the stairs. "You doing alright?"

Stiles nods, smiling. "I think you owe me a birthday kiss."

Derek glances at the stairs, obviously weary about the idea of any of the other adults seeing since they haven't told any of them yet. Well, Marin knows, but that's because she's wicked-crazy on the whole managing to read minds even as a human thing. "I don't know if it's safe…"

"Pleeeease?" Stiles whines. "My darkness hurts."

He's lying through his teeth, and Derek knows it, because he grins and says, "A certain darkness is needed to see the stars."

And Stiles totally managed to plaster on the exact same look that Melissa just had, so Derek huffs and says "fine" before pulling Stiles hard against him and pressing their lips together. Stiles loves Derek's kisses… They're always soft and hard and warm all at once and he tastes like a fucking _god_ and they always leave him breathless and Stiles can safely say that they're literally some of his favorite things in the entire world.

"Chris is going to literally shoot me in the head if he ever sees this happened," Derek says when they pull apart, still holding each other close. "He'd blow up about not able to do it or something. It's hard enough that his own daughter is dating Scott, but as far as he knows you're the last werewolf-free human left."

Stiles grins. "The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do."

Derek rolls his eyes. "Come on, your dad is rounding everybody up for presents."

Stiles hops down the stairs first, going into the living room and plopping onto the couch. "Alright!" he says brightly, watching everyone help bring gifts over to pile up in front of the TV. "I hope you guys got me everything!"

"You can't have everything," Danny says with a little snort. "Where would you put it?"

Stiles gives a good natured eye roll as everybody else around him laughs. "You are all terrible to me."

"You're an adult now, Stiles," Deaton says warmly. "You'll get used to it."

By the time that Stiles has finished opening his presents he's got pretty close to everything. Allison got him a really awesome bow with the promise of lessons, Chris got Stiles a gun with more lesson promises, Marin gave him a "get out of work free" card, Aiden is an asshole and got him a pack of cigarettes even though Stiles has never actually smoked in his life, and everybody else got him the usual clothes, video games, gift cards, and the like. Lydia's present is actually just a hundred dollar gift card to any store of his choosing, she just decided to be an equal asshole to her boyfriend and put it in a huge box to make fun of him.

"There is one present missing," he says, glaring over at his boyfriend.

Derek grins. "Your present is outside."

Stiles frowns. "What the hell did you get me that it has to stay outside?"

"You'll see, come on."

Stiles rolls his eyes as he stands to go after him, and it definitely does not escape his attention that everyone else is giving him one of those looks that suggests they know _exactly_ what he's going to get.

"It better not be a bicycle," he says. "I'm eighteen and you got me a bicycle."

"I didn't get you a bicycle, Stiles," Derek says, rolling his eyes back as he pulls the door open. "But I _did_ get you a bike."

Stiles' jaw drops. It's a motorcycle. It's _the_ motorcycle that he very first picked him up in when he was going by Erin. "Oh my _god_!" he yells, running out to it. "I didn't know you kept this! You are literally the worst person _ever_." He punches his arm, but he knows that it doesn't hurt. "You're going to have to teach me how to drive it properly, you asshole."

Derek is laughing, rubbing his arm in feigning pain. "Of course I will," he says. "You would have gotten us killed before."

Stiles grins up at him. He really wants to kiss him again, but he totally can't because everyone is watching. Dammit.

They all go to shovel their mouths full of cake after that, and Stiles totally forgets to make a wish before blowing out his candles. He's about halfway through his second piece when he realizes that his dad is trying to catch eyes with him, and once that happens he finds that he's being summoned into the land of the private.

"So, son," Patrick says, arms crossed, from where they're standing in the kitchen. Everyone is currently in the living and dining rooms, leaving the kitchen open for privacy. "I've noticed something."

Stiles raises an eyebrow. "Did I grow a chest hair and not notice it?"

"Stiles, this is serious."

"Then tell me what you've noticed."

He sighs. "You've been spending an awful lot of time with Derek."

Stiles' heart speeds up, but he's spent his entire life pretending, so it doesn't at all show across his face. "Yeah? We're friends. You sure are nosy, dad. Can't we just talk about how often _you_ stare at Melissa?"

He flits a wrist. "My own business always bores me to death; I prefer other people's. Is there any reason you're always around him? Because you're _always_ around him, plus the fact that he just showed up your best friend in the present department."

"What? Scott's present was great! Come on, Final Fantasy is awesome!"

"Stiles, please."

He huffs. "Alright!" he mutters. "You promise you won't arrest him?"

Patrick's eyes widen. "You two are _dating_?" he asks, and Stiles is surprised that it's actually a very impressive whisper.

Stiles gives a guilty grin. "Yeah, uh…remember when you didn't believe me that I was gay when Scott and I were out with Danny? Well, surprise, I'm not!—but I am bisexual."

"Oh my god," he says. "You and Derek are dating." He doesn't seem mad, just…surprised. Really, really, surprised. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because he's nine years older than me and it was illegal, that's why! But I'm eighteen now, so…you can't arrest him. And you shouldn't for before, because it was totally my fault."

He rubs both of his eyes for a second. "Oh my god," he says. "You and Derek are having sex. Please tell me you're using protection."

Stiles rolls his eyes. "Werewolves can't obtain or transfer diseases, so…no. Sorry."

He groans a little. "A simple 'yes' would have sufficed. I just…" He sighs. "Isn't the idea of dating Derek Hale kind of dangerous? I mean, I know that you're always out going after things, but… Not because he's Derek, but just because he's a werewolf. What if you piss him off?"

Stiles smiles. "An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all. Also, I piss Derek off all the time. I'm super annoying, remember? He's used to it."

Patrick huffs. "But why _Derek_?"

Stiles shrugs. "In a world of Cheerios, be a Fruit Loop."

"Stiles, honestly."

He rolls his eyes. "Honestly yourself, dad. He's hilarious, he's sarcastic, he's attractive, _and_ he's actually got feelings buried under that thick skin of his."

Patrick's eyes widen. "Really?"

Stiles snorts. "Yes, really. It's weird, I know, but don't go and ask him about them or anything. He'll clam up."

Patrick smiles at that. "You love him, don't you?"

Stiles blushes at that. "I might. How'd you figure?"

"Because you can still hate him a little bit. That's how your mother knew that she fell in love with me, anyway. She told me that I'm annoying as hell and then she kissed me."

Stiles smiles brightly. "She really did that?"

He nods. "She really did."

"Does that mean you're not going to arrest him?"

He laughs. "No, I'm not going to arrest him. There's no proof that you were…um, having sex together before today, anyway. I didn't get you on tape."

"I did!" a new voice says, and they both turn to where Peter is, holding up his video camera.

"Oh my god!" Stiles yells, diving after him.

But Derek pops out of nowhere at that, grabbing his hands around Stiles' waist and holding him back.

"Let me at him!" Stiles says with a very not-terrifying snarl. "I'm going to rip him to shreds!"

"O, shut up," Derek says, pulling him back with ease. "We'll watch it in a couple of years and laugh until we cry."

Stiles huffs, collapsing so that Derek has his entire dead wet. "Fine," he mutters. "Little prick."

When he stands up, Patrick is giving both of them a grin.

"Well, that's my cue," Derek says, flitting off.

Stiles rolls his eyes. "My hero."

Patrick pats him on the back. "Go back to your party, son. It's you're eighteenth, after all."

Stiles grins, walking off. "Love you, dad."

"Love you too, kiddo."

And everything is perfect, because this is his family, and just like love, it's not ever going to end.

_And you are the wolf  
And I am the moon  
And in the endless sky we are but one  
We are alive_

_**-The End-**_

* * *

References: There are **12** references in this chapter:

**0.** "The serious stuff and the light-hearted  
I look in your eyes and I'm just getting started  
Tell me your secrets, all your hopes and wishes too  
I want to know everything there is to know about you." Everything There is to Know About You by Mark Wills (song).

**1.** "Statistics have shown that those who have the most birthdays live the longest." Alpner.

**2.** "I don't have birthdays. I level up." Alpner.

**3.** "If I stop asking people how they are doing, maybe they will stop telling me." Asofterworld.

**4.** "When work seems overwhelming, remember that you're going to die." It's in multiple places, but I got it from a Jim Moriarty eCard created by alicexz on tumblr.

**5.** "A certain darkness is needed to see the stars." Osho, an Indian guru and spiritual teacher.

**6.** "The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do." Walter Bagehot.

**7.** "You can't have everything. Where would you put it?" Stephen Wright.

**8.** "My own business always bores me to death; I prefer other people's." Oscar Wilde.

**9.** "An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all." Oscar Wilde.

**10.** "In a world of Cheerios, be a Fruit Loop." Unknown.

**11.** "And you are the wolf  
And I am the moon  
And in the endless sky we are but one  
We are alive." Wolf & I by Oh Land.


End file.
